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The five key areas where the bailout will hit home for consumers

1. Mortgage rates
If you're shopping for a mortgage, the bailout might make a loan more available -- but higher interest rates might make it less affordable. "The prospect of an additional $700 billion in Treasury issuance is suggestive of higher Treasury yields and consequently higher mortgage rates," McBride said.
Already, the prospect of a bailout has mortgage rates hopping higher, with the 30-year fixed-rate averaging 6.09% for the week ending Sept. 25, up from last week's 5.78% average. See full story.
Still, McBride expects mortgage-rate volatility for a while. "Longer term, there's a lot of concern about inflation, which would ultimately push mortgage rates higher. But in the short-term, concerns about the economy could lead to some dips along the way."
Meanwhile, savers should keep an eye on the Fed and its rate-cutting penchant, he said. Certificate of deposit yields "have been rising pretty consistently over the last five months," McBride said. "I'm not expecting a whole lot of movement as long as the Fed stays on the sidelines." See related story.
2. On the job
Thanks to the bailout, the job market should avoid a dramatic drop-off, many experts said.
Companies "will be able to fund their expansions and their inventories," said Jim Hardesty, president of Baltimore-based Hardesty Capital Management. Going forward, "we will see lower levels of economic activity than would be desired, but they'll be substantially higher than if this bill were to fail."
Without the bailout, the unemployment rate could hit as high as 12%, said Brad DeLong, a professor of economics at the University of California at Berkeley. "A successful bailout could help keep the unemployment rate below 8% for the next year," he said.

3. Outlook for taxpayers? Depends who you ask
A major worry is that the rescue plan, depending on how it's structured, will cause a big tax hit down the road. But economists differ widely on the likely effects of this potential $700 billion outlay.
"It would be a one-time deal, so it would have a different ... effect on the budget and would be less likely to require taxes to accomplish," said Milton Ezrati, senior economist with Lord Abbett & Co. in Jersey City, N.J.
Others agreed. "It is a big hit. It's not trivial. But it's not as though before this things were great, and now we have to start raising taxes in a big way," Baker said. "We don't have a great budget picture. And this makes it worse. But I wouldn't say it qualitatively changes the overall picture."
Still, the ballooning deficit will "crowd out other tax cuts or spending eventually," said Len Berman, director of the Tax Policy Center, a joint venture of Brookings Institution and Urban Institute. That means the next president will have to make choices, given that "the candidates are each proposing $4 trillion to $6 trillion in additional tax cuts, including their health plans," he said.
Berman and others worry, too, that foreign investors won't buy U.S. debt forever.
"Everybody is flooding to [Treasurys] for the security and safety of the federal government," said Mike Moebs, an economist and chief executive of Moebs Services, a Chicago-based independent economic research firm. "If you're European, you can say, well I am concerned about my money, but I'm not going to get a quarter of one percent from the Americans, I'll do something with somebody over here in Europe," Moebs said.
Meanwhile, U.S. taxpayers may foot another bill -- as bank customers, Moebs said. Banks facing financial difficulties may lob significantly higher bank fees as they've done in the past, he said.
4. Not helping homeowners?
Some say Washington's rescue plan does too little to help struggling homeowners -- a root cause of the economy's current problems. A proposal to change bankruptcy laws to enable judges to modify mortgages may not make it into the final package.
Instead, the rescue plan may offer additional foreclosure assistance from the government, and help for borrowers to obtain better mortgages. Also, some say the government will be able to use its influence as the new owner of mortgage-related assets to influence servicers to help borrowers.
But it's unclear such a plan will work, experts said.
"There has been a lot of talk that if the government buys this stuff, they can make modifications. But that's really based on a misunderstanding -- the government is buying mortgage-backed securities. And the holders of mortgage-backed securities don't have the right to decide that mortgages are going to be modified," said Henry Sommer, president of the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys.
Proposals from Congress thus far "encourage" and "request" servicers to modify loans. But servicers, who fear being sued, may not be persuaded by a gentle push from the government. Rather, the enactment of a safe-harbor law for servicers might work, perhaps as part of the rescue plan, said Carey Leahey, an economist with Decision Economics.
"Giving a lot of money to Wall Street is going to be helpful. But if you want to get to the root cause of the problem, you have to get in housing and mortgage relief," Leahey said.
5. Betting on bankruptcy
Proponents of the proposal to change the bankruptcy laws note that court-supervised modifications could help borrowers with "piggyback" loans, which are second mortgages. Financial institutions who hold those second liens often won't allow loans to be modified without first being paid.
"Bankruptcy is the only thing that would actually give homeowners the right to get their mortgage modified," Sommer said. And, Sommer said, the court infrastructure already exists, along with its expertise in handling difficult financial situations.
But some say the proposal to let bankruptcy judges modify mortgages would further dampen consumers' access to those loans.
"Put yourself in the shoes of the bank. You're the bank and now in the post-bailout world a bankruptcy judge can do anything they want to. You've loaned your money... and a judge can arbitrarily reduce the amount of money they owe you," said Steve Curnutte, president, InsBank Mortgage, in Nashville, Tenn. "Now you're going to demand a higher interest rate, you're going to be less willing to lend. In the long run, that's horrible for consumers. That means fewer people buying houses."
Another reason supporters call for the bankruptcy change: fairness.
"How can you possibly support giving banks that blew it the opportunity to renegotiate loans using taxpayer money and not give homeowner victims the right to renegotiate their loans," said Ed Mierzwinski, consumer program director with U.S. Public Interest Research Group. "It defies conscience as well as common sense."
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