Can Congress save Wall St., and us?

Congress appears sure to pass some form of massive financial bailout, said Rosa Brooks in the Los Angeles Times. But if Washington doesn’t go beyond throwing billions at Wall Street and “get serious about spending on the true fundamentals of our economy—people, infrastructure and knowledge—the bailout can't save us.”

It’s hard to have faith in the people on Capitol Hill, said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial, especially considering that they helped create this crisis by helping Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac “turbocharge the credit mania.” But the $700 billion bailout is worth passing even if it “won't by itself revive the banking system," because "defeating it will guarantee far more damage to far more Americans.”

Counting on Congress is always risky, said David Ignatius in The Washington Post. The Senate passed a bailout but who knows what the House will do? Fortunately, there are ways to “unfreeze the credit markets”—such as looser accounting rules and a federal program to restore bank capital—that would protect Main Street without requiring help from “feckless members of Congress.”

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