Here are last Sunday's top queries from the US House of Representatives' web site (courtesy Matthew Marco):

1347 bailout
419 bailout bill
282 bail out
208 bailout plan
184 financial services
132 Search Other Sites
130 Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008
103 bail out bill
95 financial bailout
80 Bailout
78 tarp
68 email
68 700 billion
66 rescue plan
66 rescue bill
66 old AND eye AND 6
64 financial
62 rescue
62 financial markets bill
58 contact

Heh. Can you sense a theme here?

Matthew goes on to say:

"There were 21,688 total queries on Sunday, which is roughly three times the average. Variations of 'bailout' and 'bailout bill' (excluding Financial Services, the actual name of the law, and '700 billion') add up (from this list only) to 2,534 queries, or about 11.6% of all queries for the day. Also, 'bailout' has been the #1 query since 23 September."

Now what would really be interesting: tracking the rise of "bailout" and its variations before the you-know-what really hit the fan. Some economists have been predicting these troubles for quite some time...