<p>Taxpayers are at risk for billions and billions. The US government, the institution that is derided over and over again by capitalists and free market advocates, has to become Mighty Mouse to save the day. The markets aren’t working.</p>
<p>"The past 10 days will be remembered as the time the U.S. government discarded a half-century of rules to save American financial capitalism from collapse.</p>
<p>On the Richter scale of government activism, the government’s recent actions don’t (yet) register at FDR levels. They are shrouded in technicalities and buried in a pile of new acronyms.</p>
<p>But something big just happened. It happened without an explicit vote by Congress. And, though the Treasury hasn’t cut any checks for housing or Wall Street rescues, billions of dollars of taxpayer money were put at risk. A Republican administration, not eager to be viewed as the second coming of the Hoover administration, showed it no longer believes the market can sort out the mess.</p>
<p>“The Government of Last Resort is working with the Lender of Last Resort to shore up the housing and credit markets to avoid Great Depression II,” economist Ed Yardeni wrote to clients."</p>
<p>“A Republican administration, not eager to be viewed as the second coming of the Hoover administration, showed it no longer believes the market can sort out the mess.”</p>
<p>But that is precisely what Obama is preaching and deriding McCain for his “lack of economic knowledge” because McCain does want to let the markets work.</p>
<p>The market CAN sort it out. But the patient might die before the sorting is done. What happened happened, now we must clean the mess and move on. We can convict the guilty later. As much as I’d enjoy watching the carnage, it’s not worth it.</p>
<p>How about this: It is the Wealthy that is proposing this intervention. A collapse of the credit system would mean the loss of their wealth. The nonwealthy will hardly notice or care, because their loss would be minimal if any.</p>
<p>^Does it matter? Whether the economic system is either one extreme or the other end, I think most of use would rather be in the Survivors Class, neither wealthy nor poor nor smart nor stupid.</p>
<p>The sharp cheddar cheese is excellent for surviving.</p>