Great article. But in response to the first comment which blamed this current crisis on the Community Reinvestment Act is pretty absurd. There is PLENTY of blame to go around, one of which could be the lack of oversight of Freddie and Fannie - which BOTH Rubin (Clinton admin) and I believe Bush wanted to reform but both failed. To blame it on one piece of legislation is quite laughable.

Ledbetter does make a great point. This is, in essence, socialism; the philosophical debate about the U.S. government's role in the marketplace won't happen, which is sad especially in an hugely important Presidential campaign. Instead, we will just have to hear talking points and the same old bull.

The American public understands compromise. We live with a form of government that is both socialist and capitalistic at the same time. We have lived this way for many years and a tweak to the left or a tweak to the right will not bother most folks. It will take a steady calm leader that communicates a plan. FDR made people feel he was talking to them as individuals, straight and honest. He made it look easy, because it is. Be honest, be smart and communicate a balanced plan, and the American public will follow; basic unencumbered leadership.

Excellent article, although I think you are too kind to the conservative philosophy. It seems to me that Republicans have long favored socialism – but only for the rich, and only when it allows them an opportunity to shift loses onto society at large. Our current $700 billion bailout is nothing new; the difference is only in the massive scale of the event.

To cite one example: the Savings and Loans scandal of the 1980’s, in which key investors – Neil Bush being one – stuffed their own pockets while managing hundreds of millions of dollars of other peoples’ money into oblivion. These financial ‘experts’ took advantage of sloppy deregulation and absentee oversight (via Republican leadership) and kept short-term windfall profits for themselves. Savings and Loans failures were shifted to the public via taxes and state ownership of the remaining assets.

This is business as usual in the United States: the impacts of calamitous failures are borne by the entire population, while the responsible individuals are allowed astronomical profits. I have never heard a Republican criticize this, nor have the intellectual fortitude to call it what it is: Socialism for the rich.

The conclusion that 'facts don't matter' to the dominant wing of the Republican Party, is absolutely dead on... whether we are talking about WMD’s, the environment, or economics. For eight years we have endured the intellectual dishonesty of conservatives, and this bailout is perhaps their greatest flash of hypocrisy yet.