Like anyone who wants America to still have an economy tomorrow, I support the government’s intervention to head off disaster in the Bear Stearns fiasco. But I admit discomfort, for this seems to be precisely the type of governmental assistance that I hear many people decry when it’s proffered to the less fortunate. We give it to Bear Stearns — even though they were reckless and irresponsible, even though their predicament is primarily of their own making — because they “matter”. They matter because they’re powerful, and if they go down, they take a lot of people with them. Most of us don’t matter, so if we go down, nobody cares.
And that’s not right.