The Wall Street bailout bombs

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is pushing for quick congressional approval of his $700 billion Wall Street bailout plan, said Newt Gingrich in National Review Online. But “before D.C. gets our money, it owes us some answers.” For starters, are the “financial magicians” Paulson will hire to fix the crisis the same Wall Street geniuses who got us into it?

Paulson wants a “clean” bill, said Paul Krugman in The New York Times, and that means “taxpayer-financed bailout with no strings attached.” We need some strings, such as giving taxpayers “a share in the ownership” of the soured mortgage-backed bonds they are paying for.

Paulson has “one powerful retort” to all these concerns: that his plan is “better than continued turmoil,” said Robert Samuelson in The Washington Post. Our financial system depends on trust, and we need to do something dramatic to restore the trust that has been lost.

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