No doubt many very very contrite corporatists will immediately do penance for their hubris and greed ... as soon as they can remember in which of their closets in which of their houses they keep their hairshirts. No doubt they've been carefully stored in plastic since they were dry-cleaned after last time they were worn.

It's not the proponents of the free market that want this bailout, or any bailout.

There hasn't been a free market since the creation of the Federal Reserve, so how can we make any conclusions based upon it? The Federal Reserve controls the lawfully enforced medium of exchange... that's not freedom. That's regulation of the markets.

So, blast those who lied about being for the free market, but please don't drag the actual concept of a free market into this. Austrian economists have been predicting this meltdown for decades. Even if we dodge it this time, it'll just be that much worse next time.

At least you get a picture inserted on yours whereas we don't.

...about 'corrections' and infinite wisdom of adam smith's 'invisible hand' throttling us, the taxpayers.

There is no such thing as a "free" market. Sure, markets may start out "free" but over time a handful (or one) of producers seize control of the market. They use pricing and supplies to squeeze out the competition and the market is no longer free. If you try to regulate this, there goes your free market.

Free markets are a myth. Ayn Rand wrote fiction. Capitalism is a theory. Either we control the greedy or the greedy control us. Choose.

... but the whole neo-liberal phalanx of Clintonites and DLC'ers. Regan Lite. Democrats have to ask themselves, regarding commerce, privatization and de-regulation - are we Clintonists or ... Rooseveltians? And if they say neither, look out.

It's true that the regulation-is-evil crowd has been thoroughly discredited, but it's wrong to portray the S&L bailout as simply sticking taxpayers with the bill for evil corporate malfeasance. That action kept a lot of people from losing their life savings, which would have had a devestating effect on the economy.

Siimilarly, the mortgage bailout now being considered would require the rescued institutions to offer easier terms to distressed homeowners. So there is something for the little guy in all this. Not to mention that, again, the bailout would prevent an economic implosion that would hurt ordinary people far worse than CEO types.

We can hope but I wouldn't expect any free-market true believer to shut up anytime, now or later. From their point of view the free market is working -- what you see is a correction that punishes those that made bad choices and rewards those that made good choices. There are no "innocents" and those getting hurt right now is just more evidence about how free markets work. If only the government would stay out of it the bad-choice makers would eventually die out and the market would "correct" itself.

I hear this kind of thing a lot. Can you tell?

What they never get is that the people with economic power will always trade for their own short term gain in exchange for your long-term loss if they have a chance. Sure there will be some ex-billionares and ex-millionaires to be made out of all this, but by and large those who are really responsible for this are high and dry, secure with their trust funds and off-shore accounts that might be a fraction of what they could have made in a few more years but more than enough to support themselves in comfort and country-club privilege for the rest of their days.

Oh, and you can be sure that a big percentage of those voting for McCain this November will be doing so because they represent "personal responsibility." Now how can you argue with that.

I do not buy the argument, this is meant to save people jobs retirements etc.

Its a whitewash on the fact that the people who caused all of this will get to keep their millions and billions of dollars.

At least be honest in your arguments if you are going to argue from this point.

I would take all of their assets and use those to reimburse people. Put them (the ones who caused this) in jail and then garnish their prison wages until they die or pay back an acceptable amount of what they took from people.

This major bail out has nothing to do with the citizens of this country but it does have everything to do with keeping the wealthy wealthy and safe.

Here's a picture of DrEast's free market running its course:

The federal government does nothing. It lets Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and AIG fail. Confidence in the American economy disappears. Trillions of dollars in savings are wiped out as the stock markets go through the floor and banks fail left and right. (For the sake of argument, let's eliminate FDIC insurance too, since that's just a distortion of the free market.) The economy grinds to a halt because there's no credit any longer. Tens of millions of people lose their jobs. The dollar sinks to one-tenth of its former value as foreign investors pull out of the U.S. economy en masse--after all, investments in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were supposed to be as safe as U.S. Treasury bonds, right? Bread lines and shantytowns start appearing everywhere. The only people to survive the wholesale economic slaughter are the wealthy few who have managed to invest in hard assets around the globe. Eventually--say, a generation or two down the road--things pick up again, maybe.

That's the free market. Maybe it'll result in greater overall prosperity and efficiency when viewed over a thousand-year timeframe; maybe not. In any case, the long-term isn't really relevant to the average person trying to maintain a home and put food on the table because, as Keynes noted, in the long-term we're all dead.

So, yeh, you're right. We don't have the free market. Thank God.

Why do we the taxpaying public not hear a single word about bringing these Crooks, CEO's and politicians to justice on Criminal charges?

Why are we not talking about "OUR" Government confiscating all the wealth and personal assets of these CEOs and politicians that scammed the public for greed, the same way we do to Drug Dealers.

Free trade and free markets, what Bullshit!!!