America has been living beyond its means: Who's going to pay?

On September 20th, President Bush asked Congress to agree with his plan to bail out the United States Financial Markets. Over the last year we have been watching mortgage companies allow clients to acquire mortgages without putting any money down. When the housing prices fell, these clients were left paying a mortgage much higher than the current worth of the property. Many of these clients defaulted on their loans and the financial institutions were stuck with them. This has lead to a downward spiral of financial institutions throughout the United States with a huge drop in the stock market. President Bush proposed that the U.S. Treasury buy up $700 billion in mortgage-related bad debts, making this “the largest financial bailout in U.S. history,” and to raise the national debt ceiling to $11.3 trillion (from 10.6 trillion). Why should we, the United States tax payers, have to pay for the financial mistakes of our greedy financial institutions?