Excellent commentary by Michael Malone on the bailout mess:
From where I sit, the United States government has embarked on two pieces of social engineering in the last few years. One was to make oil as expensive as possible to drive people to greater use of alternative energy sources — because anything less would be irresponsible and destructive to the environment. The other was to enshrine home ownership (i.e., easy-to-obtain mortgages) as a new American right — because anything less would be unequal and racist.
None of us voted on these decisions — indeed, neither was even spoken about directly, much less debated. But nevertheless, both became national policy … and both have sparked national, now international, crises. Then, once they became crises, both were blamed on â??greedy capitalismâ??, instead of what they really were: legislative interference into market forces…. To my mind, what makes this economic crisis different from ones in even the recent past is that it has exposed the fact that there are, apparently, no real leaders left in Washington — that the intellectual capital in the National Capitol has fallen to a new low — if thatâ??s possible. Most of all, it shows that we can no longer look to D.C. for leadership into the rest of the 21st century.
See his full article for more. (via Instapundit)