Bailout Bullshit Update

I only recently subscribed to the blog Cafe Hayek, which is named after the late, brilliant economist Friedrich Hayek. But given all the chaos on Wall Street and reckless plans to try to fix it coming out of Washington, I'm glad I did. It's the best place to go for information about the root causes of these problems that I've found thus far.

To get a better understanding of how this financial crisis got started, check out the Cafe Hayek posts "No money down, revisited"; "Bear Stearns, the CRA, and Freddie Mac"; and "The role of the CRA."

Meanwhile, over at Salon Glenn Greenwald expresses relief that some conservatives have started to oppose the Bush administration's bailout plan; however, he notes that their motives aren't exactly pure:

Apparently, the same political faction that has cheered on every instance of unchecked, absolute executive power over the last eight years -- which demanded that the President, and he alone, decide which citizens, including Americans, can be spied on, detained, even tortured, and that no oversight or disclosure was needed for any of that -- has suddenly re-discovered their desire for checks on federal government power. The reason? They say it themselves: with the looming prospect of an Obama presidency, they may no longer be in charge of that Government and these "small government conservatives" have thus suddenly re-awoken to the virtues of checks and balances, oversight and other restraints.

Finally, Lee Camp at 23/6 provides a simple notebook sketch illustrating with stick people what the proposed bailout is really all about.