Great article on how the government is ok with bailing out, providing tax breaks, and subsidies, to large corporations, using YOUR MONEY. But when it comes to you and helping you during hard times, you get nothing, because helping you is deemed too expensive.
Bear Stearns is too important to allow to fail, but millions of homeowners can end up on the street when home prices plummet sharply. The Wall Street holders of overvalued mortgage pools are too important to fail, but homeowners drowning in debt are told to keep paying not matter what.
And Gretchen Morgenson, in the NYTimes, opines on how the Fed bailout of Bear Stearns, “Crosses a Line”.
And as Paul Krugman writes in the NYtimes:
Bear, in other words, deserved to be allowed to fail — both on the merits and to teach Wall Street not to expect someone else to clean up its messes.
The government should not intervene on behalf of the lender or the consumer. Mal-investment and poor credit practices should not be rewarded on either side.
Let the markets correct themselves…
-James
http://www.thepoliticus.org