He Lectures

Tom Friedman is feeling anxious about the rescue/bailout/whatever-spin-word-they're-using- today.  He sympathizes with our anger that we should be expected to rescue the selfish and greedy fools and knaves that got us into this mess in the first place, as they grow always and inexorably richer and we grow poorer from bailing them out of the sorry mess they made. 

He agonises:

I’ve always believed that America’s government was a unique political system — one designed by geniuses so that it could be run by idiots. I was wrong. No system can be smart enough to survive this level of incompetence and recklessness by the people charged to run it.

This is dangerous. We have House members, many of whom I suspect can’t balance their own checkbooks, rejecting a complex rescue package because some voters, whom I fear also don’t understand, swamped them with phone calls. I appreciate the popular anger against Wall Street, but you can’t deal with this crisis this way.

Although he is sympathetic, he tells us we have to bite the bullet.

I totally understand the resentment against Wall Street titans bringing home $60 million bonuses. But when the credit system is imperiled, as it is now, you have to focus on saving the system, even if it means bailing out people who don’t deserve it. Otherwise, you’re saying: I’m going to hold my breath until that Wall Street fat cat turns blue. But he’s not going to turn blue; you are, or we all are. We have to get this right.

He concludes regretfully:

I always said to myself: Our government is so broken that it can only work in response to a huge crisis. But now we’ve had a huge crisis, and the system still doesn’t seem to work. Our leaders, Republicans and Democrats, have gotten so out of practice of working together that even in the face of this system-threatening meltdown they could not agree on a rescue package, as if they lived on Mars and were just visiting us for the week, with no stake in the outcome.

Yeah, well, good thing there's an election right around the corner.  I haven't heard any talk of preventing future situations like this and I have't heard any talk of sanctioning the perpetrators.    Maybe all that is best left until after the election, though.  So long as  these matters are addressed and not just swept under the rug until the next megacrisis.