A publisher I knew once proposed a picture book, “They Must Know What They’re Doing or They Wouldn’t Be Where They Are,” to show the captain of the Titanic, the designers of the Edsel, LBJ running the War in Viet Nam and other overseers of spectacular 20th century blunders.
The Bush Administration now rates a sequel all its own for being in charge of two cataclysms, in the Middle East and here at home.
As Bear Stearns, the poster boy for Wall Street greed, gets gobbled up with the help of taxpayer money, Paul Krugman asks, “When the feds do bail out the financial system, what will they do to ensure that they aren’t also bailing out the people who got us into this mess?”