Oh, I know that everybody wants the Feds to rescue everything. The Secretary of the Treasury has more or less rescued Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, although for years these two gargantuan mortgage makers simply cooked the books to disguise the dismal state of their business. Will any C.E.O. go to jail or be required to return the lavish bonuses they picked up? Now that the big two have been taken care of it's the turn of the big three: GM, Ford and Chrysler. And, of course, the United Auto Workers, because of which there is an unstoppable bi-partisan rescue coalition for the companies that have stupidly tried to resist the march of history, of economics and the environment. Congressional Democrats and Republicans and the two presidential candidates are basically in cahoots with Detroit on this one.
As Paul Ingrassia points out in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, this is not change, both of which the nominees are prophesying on their own behalves. His article is called "Detroit's Blackmail Attempt is Beyond Shameless," and beyond shameless it is.
So, for that matter, is Henry Paulson's salvaging of the two FMs. And, once again, it's the WSJ that makes the most coherent sense in its editorial, "Weekend at Henry's," about what's being called the rescue of capital...but isn't.