Tuesday, September 30, 2008

A Plague On Both Your Houses

From the Economist:
"..Pat Buchanan, that great crypto-socialist, makes his case against the bail-out in familiar terms. Naturally, the financial crisis is the fault of "the elites" in New York and Washington. "[W]hat did the American people do to deserve this?" asks Mr Buchanan, apparently unaware of the hundreds of thousands of homeowners who bit off a little more mortgage than they could chew. This may be getting repetitive but I think it bears repeating (if not shouting): All evidence suggests that the current meltdown was built from layered irresponsibility.
This financial crisis is a genuinely democratic one, with hard-working homeowners and billionaire villains each playing a role...I suppose a whiff of scapegoat might be a kind of homeopathic treatment for sclerosis of the account, but a more comprehensive response in which each of us owns up to his or her role and sacrifices for the solution sounds much more promising. "

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