As discussion over the financial bailout drags on, might there be an opportunity for something truly different? Everyone with whom I've talked is against the "bailout," and part of the reason is because we're pumping money into a system none of them understand. Well, I'll take that back. People understand two things: The number, $700 billion, and the fact that it will be used to buy, essentially, money.

I'm not terribly sophisticated about the market. But I do know that it's based, at least largely, on the idea of something being valuable. Not the actual value of something, like when you trade something tangible, say an apple, for something else, like an orange. That's straight up barter. Then we introduce money, and the money is meant to represent something, like the value we would place on an orange, if we had it, and we trade that for the apple. And so on, until what we're trading is a percentage of the future value of money. Or something like that.

So here's a simple idea. You can call it simplistic if you like. But I'm into common sense. And to me, I'd feel a hell of a lot better if the government were to assign thousands of dollars in debt to me and my child and my child's child -- the future value of my child, if you will -- in exchange for something tangible.

We've been hearing for the last generation that our infrastructure is crumbling, and we've seen terrible examples in recent years. Bridges in Minnesota and levees in New Orleans. We've seen the mundane examples of potholes and not enough roads or too many roads to fix and not enough mass transit. Dams are aging. Maybe this is a little afield, since it's not, strictly speaking, brick and mortar infrastructure, but the market has not done well enough in providing cheap and fast Internet access to everyone. Taking the idea of infrastructure a little further, we're not developing the future of energy, and we're not developing our intellectual capital.

Why can't we spend $700 billion to build things the country needs, things we all share, basic civil and civic infrastructure that was so essential to defining our success in the 20th Century?

Imagine 700 cities in the country given $1 billion each. The cities could define their needs, sell the bonds on Wall Street, and get to work. Or give 350 of the largest cities $1 billion each, and use the other $350 billion for the national infrastructure such as the interstate highway system, dams, and bridges.

I know, the issue is distressed mortgages or "toxic debt" or whatever. It's not just that the economy needs money for lubrication. We have to give it to the people who supply the idea of money so they can give real money to the people who do the hiring and building, the people who actually create value -- you know, real things, like widgets and apples and oranges. What an awful trap.

Meanwhile, cities are having a hard time selling bonds, meaning that local services are already or soon will be affected.

Here are two questions I am waiting for someone to answer:

-- If we need to put money into the economy, instead of assigning it to the part of the system that places value on the idea of potential future value, how can we assign it to the part of the system that actually relates to real, solid goods and services? On building something. On building America.

-- In the aftermath of this fiasco, who will step up and provide leadership we can believe in, and really put country first?