The death of capitalism

Even if nothing good comes out of the Bush administration's proposed $700 billion intervention in the mortgage crisis, maybe we can get U.S. economic leaders to stop pretending they're capitalists. Capitalists who expect the government to bail them out when the economic roller-coaster they've been pillaging runs off the track, as it inevitably must, are not capitalists -- they're beggars looking for a handout from the same hand they've been biting for years. That the supposedly laissez-faire Bush administration has to ask Congress to rescue the financial system is a humiliation and a repudiation of decades of Republican Party economics. Where were the market "corrections" to prevent the meltdown? Where were the cooler heads to calm the reckless investors? And, as long as we're on the subject, where were the government regulators whose job it is to prevent such breakdowns? The taxpaying public will accept any reasonable plan to fix the economy -- they're the ones who will suffer if the cart comes apart in the ditch. And it will be worth it if the economic giants who control the money will stick their socks in it for awhile.