I do not intend to suggest that the situation is either/or. However, there has unquestionably been unfair advantage given to the few who already have a great deal of money, and this advantage has persisted for a long period of time. What I am saying is that this is class warfare, too, and the few who have had the advantage should not be surprised that the many to whom it has been denied resent them.

Anger always leads to injustices. The citizens' committees of the French Revolution became hysterical, bloodthirsty, and unjust. But the conditions which led to the revolution might have been prevented if the royalty had had better sense and a smidgen of empathy. If one wishes to prevent injustice for oneself and one's fellows, it is probably wiser to pursue justice generally than to pursue advantage.

I agree that those money managers who lost a great deal wish they had not. It is, however, quite different to walk away from a market debacle with hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars than it is to be fired from a job and have no means of support whatsoever.

The person in the former situation should not expect sympathy from the person in the latter situation.

As for reading your other writings: The only thing that could convince me such an act was worth the effort would be the quality of those writings of yours I have already read.

Elegant point, motherwell. Such chains of thought may on rare occasions be accurate, but when they are, the accuracy is the result of accident, not thinking.

Extremely well said, and thank you. Reason, self-examination, the practice of sound judgment. One who has consistently been misled and lied to may question that the official story is true in all of its details without buying into a conspiracy theory.

I will add this regarding conspiracies, since I have not seen it stated so far. In general, I doubt the existence of longlasting conspiracies, for one simple reason: People are lousy at keeping secrets. The bigger the conspiracy, the sooner it is likely to collapse.

I do not think John Kennedy was assassinated by one marksman shooting from the Texas Book Depository (how did he manage to shoot our President in the front of the head?), and I rather think that at least some of those who witness UFOs are seeing something not explicable in conventional terms. But in neither case do I feel compelled to assume a vast top-level conspiracy to hide the truth. Sheer human incompetence argues against the likelihood.

To take the latter first: One suspects that a billion angry bees will soon learn not to announce in public that he (or she, but I suspect somehow he) is a professional economist, upon pain of finding out exactly what a billion angry bees will do to someone who offends them.

As for his(?) and askdong's assertion that the proposed bailout should not be viewed as class warfare, or that "trumping" economics with morals is somehow wrong: Class warfare ALWAYS proceeds by means of unfair economic advantage. The concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands is and has always been class warfare. When I was a child in Mississippi in the 1950s and early 60s, those who were on welfare were constantly described as shiftless bums (it was a part of the race warfare, because given the economic realities in Mississippi, blacks were forced disproportionately onto welfare rolls). Some of us then asked the very question many are now asking: Why is it "welfare" when it is given to people, but "capitalism" when it is given to corporations?

One is touched, however, by the concern these two show for the well-being of the general public, which causes them to favor bailing out financial enterprises I would describe as too stupid to live but which they think of as too big to fail. I look forward to reading the many writings they have surely produced previously on behalf of working-class citizens.

And incidentally--public utilities are not immune from greed and hubris (and thanks to the poster who introduced those two entirely accurate words). I once worked for a public service commission as a mathematician who helped calculate rates (not FOR the utilities, please note, but as a check on them). The attitude at utilities is the same: Regulations are for fools, do everything you can get away with to violate the intent of the law, and grab the money and run.

As usual, ordinary people suffer while the people who engineered this trouble get a walk. Okay, let them. We don't have to punish them. But could we please put something in place going forward that works and takes care of those who are just trying to make a living? Perhaps we could begin if those who have so long profited from the big casino of the market realized in what general contempt they are held.

Excessive wealth will shortly become, for most of us, the sign of a diseased being. In some cases this may not be fair, but it will happen. (Of course, excessive poverty for millions upon millions has long been considered fair.)