"Compared to the cold shoulder given to struggling homeowners, the cash and attention lavished by the government on the nation’s financial titans provides telling insight into the priorities of the Bush administration."

"To the Editor:
Regarding the Friday, March 21, 2008 editorial, "Socialized Compensation" - might a well known critical quote by William O. Douglas, former U.S. Supreme Court Justice, be relevant?

"Our upside down welfare state is "socialism for the rich, free enterprise for the poor." The great welfare scandal of the age concerns the dole we give rich people."

In further regard of undemocratic techniques of government intervention which protect the unscrupulous dishonest and undermine traditional social values, are these words from a very knowledgeable George Soros, that creator and manipulator of multi-billion dollar hedge funds credited with sinking the currencies of Asian nations and earlier even those of Sweden and Great Britain:

“Perhaps the greatest threat to freedom and democracy in the world today comes from the formation of unholy alliances between government and business. This is not a new phenomenon. It used to be called fascism... The outward appearances of the democratic process are observed, but the powers of the state are diverted to the benefit of private interests."

And finally, since the Times editorial points to this year's "gargantuan subprime-related losses", subprime securities and "incomprehensible mortgages with unpredictable interest rates given to people who have no reasonable chance of understanding them, let alone paying them back",

let us hear from John Maynard Keynes, who is credited with molding the techniques of government intervention that saved the capitalist system after the Second World War. From his retirement he expected,

“in a more enlightened future, a return to some of the most sure and certain principles of religion and traditional value – that avarice is a vice, that the exaction of usury is a misdemeanor, and the detestable love of money as a possession – as distinguished from love of money as a means to the enjoyments realities of life – will be recognized for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to specialists in mental disease.”
A most devastating indictment of the capitalist system Keynes promoted all his working life from a wiser and more honest perspective of his maturity."

— Jay Janson, New York City