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DISCLAIMER: I have virtually no aptitude for economics, so please take this rather unsophisticated rant with a grain of salt.

I've mentioned before that I tend towards the laissez-faire when it comes to economic issues, and so I've felt pretty ambivalent about the whole Wall-Street Rescue-Package(TM) drama. I do think there's a (limited) role for government regulation of the economy, but I think it's far too late for that now, and I also wonder how much good it would have done in the first place. From what I can tell, this whole mess boils down to overzealous financiers making bad loans to people who couldn't afford them, and this seems to violate the principles of week 1 of Banking 101: don't loan money to people who will never be able to afford to pay you back. Granted, this is an obscene oversimplification of a very complex series of events, but it all seems based on lenders making poorly-advised loans to lendees who could ill afford them (see that? Both sides are to blame...). I don't see why the government should get involved here, because a) lenders, loss is the price of profit sometimes, and b) borrowers, caveat emptor. True, this thing is now so big that it looks like it will thump the whole economy, but part of me thinks well, thems the breaks; welcome to capitalism folks. We ought to be prepared to take the bitter with the sweet.
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