With all the wrangling left, right and center over the financial bailout before Congress, the American people seem to agree on one thing: The national economy stinks.

Given the wide political divide among Americans, it's difficult to image a subject about which there is universal agreement. But in a recent poll conducted by the American Research Group, no one said they believed the national economy is getting better. Eight-two percent said it was getting worse, and 68 percent believed the national economy is in a recession.

There was no question included in the survey about whether a bailout of the troubled financial sector would make respondents feel like chumps, but that number is likely to be pretty high as well, if comments on various Internet blogs are an indication. When the fortunes of a small business turn, the owner just goes broke. But when Wall Street bankers get hung out to dry on the hook of their own greed, taxpayers are exhorted to ride to the rescue.

Many people also are deeply suspicious about the $700 billion bailout figure. There's lots of disagreement about whether that will really be the full tab, or whether a bailout of this type will even have the desired effect.

Such skepticism is probably related to the fact that officials in Washington don't have a good track record when it come to costs. Remember when the Iraq's reconstruction was supposed to pay for itself out of Iraq's oil receipts?

Another element of the mess is the ballooning national debt, and how much fuel a big bailout will heap on that creeping catastrophe.

The national debt clock, which ticks away inexorably like some doomsday device, stands at $9,791,670,021, 519.02.

Or at least it did, at 9:30 a.m. on Friday, Sept 26. That figure is considerably higher today.

It comes as small comfort that some analysts suggest that the worst, if it happens, will not be as bad as the Great Depression of the 1930s - it would just be the worst economic calamity since the Great Depression.

Feel reassured yet?

Of course, what happens in Wyoming likely will vary to a considerable degree with what occurs in the rest of the country, given the energy extraction nature of our economy.

In the latest figures, the state unemployment rate stood at 3.9 percent in August, compared to 6.1 percent in the U.S. overall.

But it's also worth pointing out that the rate of state job growth has declined since peaking in June 2006, and the unemployment rate has been inching upward in recent months.

So what happens in the rest of the country, won't necessarily stay in the rest of the country.