The Wall Street Journal’s — ‘How Democracy Ruined the Bailout’ – seems to think that the combination of news media and the politics of our election added more fuel to a delicate economic crisis.

The old print media, usually the goto source for info and expertise, has become the victim of their current business model of paid subscriptions and advertising. The recession, which they may have encouraged, has caused people to stop spending on the non-essentials — newspspers and magazines. And has driven them to discover great free, online sources.

Mike Elgan has a great insight and solution. And it has a long tail. He says that local newspspers should focus on making local news global. Local papers should forget about competing with global, national, statewide news coverage which many of them still carry. Their subject is local but the audience is global. Plus they have bigger brands that they could leverage unlike bloggers who have been doing this for a while.

The New York Times may have figured that out already. Well, at least they keep trying new stuff.

I can’t stop thinking about this. In a previous post, I had a crazy idea that giving a cool million to each citizen makes more sense than bailing out faulty banks and companies.

Now that they’re in line to receive almost $8 trillion and still counting, I still think so. And everytime I hear about one more of these bailouts this idea keeps coming back.

With the U.S. population at about 300,000,000, if we each received $1 million that would add up to about $3 trillion instead of the $7.7 trillion currently in the works.

There would be no poverty, the toxic mortgages could be paid off and taken off of the books, the banks would be flooded with new accounts and money to lend, credit cards could  be paid off, everyone could have health care, and an education of their choice, the taxes on the money would fill the coffers of the government, new cars and homes could be purchased, gas tanks filled, struggling businesses saved, new businesses started, retirees would have enough to live on, the malls would be filled, the government wouldn’t need all the spending, and the media would thrive covering it all. Talk about a stimulus package?!

One negative for the country is that some of us might not want to work anymore. So there might be a work requirement attached to the payment.

What do you think?

According to the venture capitalists and angels in Silicon Valley, the capital that is the life blood of our digital future, especially Web 2.0, has stopped flowing. Seems the business models of Web 2.0 were being questioned at the same time that Wall Street and the US Government screwed up our financial system big time.

Michael Arrington, the founder of TechCrunch has written an obituary on Web 2.0. And posted Sequoia Capital’s 56 Slide Presentation Of Doom.

An obit was also carried on Om Malik’s blog GigaOm and in the LA Times. This was in an article in the Financial Times –

Many of the companies that emerged in the recent start-up boom will end up “spattered on windshields and radiator grills and be forgotten”, said Michael Moritz, a partner at Sequoia Capital and an early backer of Google and Yahoo.

And a bit of irony appears as layoffs are being reported first on blogs before companies have informed their employees. Some companies unfortunately are now forced to twitter first, layoff second, according to the New York Times.

If you want to keep track of the layoffs see the gloomy ‘Layoff Tracker’ at TechCrunch, and another Scorecard at CNET.

It’s a sad day. Especially when you realize that it didn’t have to happen.