[define "is"]

I don't know about the large conglomerate and multi-national banks, but I just secured a loan for expansion of my buisness this past week through a local hometown type bank. We've been negotiating and working the terms out for 2 months, but I thought surely that the current climate would make them want to put it off. However, it didn't seem to put them off at all and everything is going through as planned.

The bailout is worrisome to me. I fear that a lot of that money borrowed from the taxpayer will end up being loaned back to the taxpayer, at interest of course, that it was forcibly taken from. From the looks of the state of things on Wall Street, my confidence in the bailout working is quite low, and the continued promises of Henry Paulson that it's just one step in a series of steps makes me even less confident. After all, I didn't see that first step getting us anywhere but backwards, thus far.