Why the federal bailout of Bear Stearns but not of Lehman Brothers? Aside from promoting moral hazard, the federal government's selective bailout displays the arbitrary nature of activist government. No institution, not even the federal government, is prosperous enought to bailout every failed business. The president has repeatedly advanced the idea that "the government should not be picking winners and losers." Yet, his policy on the banking/real estate crisis has been to pick winners and losers. His stated policy is better than his actual policy. Let the losers lose and the winners win. How about a government of laws and not of whim?

It gets curiouser as to why Bush allowed, without any investigation, the bail out of Freddie and Fannie. Is he weak or protecting the whole bunch of them? Although not necessarily a partisan issue, 60% of largesse provided by that quasi-private cash cow was snatched by the Democrats with the biggest names involved being Democratic Senators. Add to that Clinton’s 1999 complicity in repealing the law that allowed the merging of investment and commercial banking to facilitate loans to high risk citizens which started the whole subprime mess.

Interesting too that Franklin Raines, the former chairman and chief executive officer of Fannie Mae who served as White House budget director under President Bill Clinton and who grabbed $100 million is now a staff advisor to Obama.

What an incestuous lot.

To add to this debacle, why not Lehman but AIG?

This is outrageous and if there is a better reason to demand term limits for these thieves, I'd like to know what it is! Fast and loose with other people's money while they're on the take from the same companies they're bailing out.

As far as the market goes, how will it ever stabilize when there is no fear of failure? When there's no risk and no incentive to manage properly because companies are relatively certain the government will back them up.