Love for the bailout haters

“We all owe a debt of thanks to the wing nuts,” on both "the far left and (gulp) the far right,” said Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post, who stalled the passage of President Bush’s $700 billion bailout plan. The bailout probably will, and probably should, clear the House today. But thanks to “all the skeptics” who refused to roll over, we at least had a week to “take stock” of how we got to where we're bailing out the “greed is good” Wall Street yahoos.

Blaming this mess solely on “a rapacious Wall Street” is a little hypocritical, said Bethany McLean in The New York Times. Wall Street sliced up and sold off our jumbo mortgages, but “who used the proceeds of a home equity line to pay for an elaborate vacation?” It’s unfair, but our small bite of the profit is partly to blame for our big bite of the bill.

Is an urgent bailout even necessary? said Daniel Parks in the Chicago Tribune. “I don’t know,” but the financial media is only covering those who say it is, and showering “breathtaking” condescension on anyone who thinks maybe Wall Street should suffer. “Scores of respected economists” back up those of us who think there might be a better way.

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