"The U.S. government's possible Wall Street bailout may have cheered markets Thursday, but some ordinary region residents are feeling anything but cheery at the prospect of ponying up the $700 billion it will take to finance it."

"I think there is a problem that no matter how much Congress bails them out, the inherent selfishness of some people will always ruin everything," said Christy Klippel, of Hammond.

Klippel, 29, said she has seen the value of her 401(k) retirement account drop by 20 percent in the past six months. A staff member for the nonprofit Intervarsity Christian Fellowship, she still has student loans and a mortgage to pay every month.

She was taking some time out at Wicker Park in Highland earlier this week, reading her Bible. She had heard the media talk about the "worst economic crisis" since the Great Depression but said she has no way of really knowing if that is true.

"Whoever has the money makes the money," she said.

Thursday, President Bush announced he had an agreement in principle with Congress on the bailout. That sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average up 197 points, after losing 563 points in the week's first three days of trading.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers agreed Thursday to the outlines of a $700 billion bailout for the financial industry that made several substantial changes to Bush's initial request. Key Republicans still were resisting the emerging agreement.

For some people, the plan to give Wall Street firms and banks up to $700 billion in taxpayer money strikes even closer to home.

"The big investors, like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, they get bailed out," said Winfield resident Debbie Medved. "My home is in foreclosure, and no one is bailing me out."

Medved's townhome was slated for a sheriff's sale in August. Wells Fargo foreclosed on her for failing to make her $1,100 monthly mortgage payment.

Despite congressional demands for help for foreclosed homeowners, there was little information Thursday on what the bailout package will do for them. Bush said precious little on the subject in his speech to the nation Wednesday night.

Having a component to the bailout to help struggling homeowners would both help sell the plan and do some real good, said Bala Arshanapalli, a professor of finance at Indiana University Northwest in Gary.

"Helping out homeowners would go a long way because it gives them a structured way to pay back, rather than just defaulting," Arshanapalli said.

Day-to-day lending among banks dried up late last week because of uncertainty about the mortgage mess, which means depositors could have quickly found it difficult to withdraw their money, Arshanapalli said.

Firm action like this week's bailout proposal was needed, but he realizes it can be a hard sell for the common person.

"People might think we're bailing out those rich, crooked CEOs who made so much money," Arshanapalli said. "But if we don't do something, we will be in bad shape."

Even investors with some experience and sophistication had their world rocked this week by the size of the bailout and the thought they would pay for it.

Miki Katz, of Munster, said she and her fellow investment club members had the same fears and anxieties as other small investors.

"What came out over the weekend is a pretty good indication of how fragile our economy is and that the Congress and both political parties no longer serve the American people, or they never would have stood by and allowed this to happen," Katz said.

Katz, an interior designer and artist based in Munster, is a member of Women Investors 2000, founded in 1993. The women, mainly professionals in their 40s, 50s, and 60s, pool money and invest in stocks as a group after careful research and discussion.

They hold stock in major companies like Bank of America, BP, Wells Fargo and Harley Davidson. Many of their stocks have taken a beating along with the broader market in the past several months, while some have held their value, she said.

"We are very diversified," Katz said. "Thank God we learned that lesson in 2002."