Bertram Chatham, owner of a Citrus Heights Halloween store, says he's just as good a businessman today as he was a year ago.

So when Wells Fargo & Co. slashed his available line of credit this summer from $26,000 to $10,000, he knew he'd gotten snared by the nation's credit crunch. The reduced financing prodded him to scale back his operation this fall, at a cost to the economy of about 30 jobs.

No wonder Chatham believes in the $700 billion financial rescue plan that's gripped Wall Street, Washington and the presidential campaign.

"What they're trying to do is … unfreeze the credit," said Chatham, owner of Halloween Express of Northern California. "This is necessary."

Chatham's experience demonstrates how Wall Street and Main Street are married to each other, for better or worse. Banks, investment banks and other financial titans, choking on bad real estate debts, are squeamish about making new loans. Even solidly profitable institutions are increasingly conservative.

There's more: Without a federal bailout, the argument goes, the current clampdown on credit could turn into a widespread financial panic that takes down strong lenders along with the weak and does catastrophic harm to the economy. Under that theory, the bailout – under which the government would buy up Wall Street's swollen portfolio of troubled mortgage-backed securities – is an expensive but necessary step to prevent doomsday.

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