Bailout Nation

Barry Ritholtz, author of the forthcoming book Bailout Nation, tells the Wall Street Journal that "if you believe in free market capitalism, you have to let people fail" because "capitalism without failure is like religion without sin." Ritholz provides a decent four-minute primer on what's wrong with Hank Paulson's hurried, $700 billion dollar bailout (which he plausibly estimates could balloon to $1.5 trillion) of Wall Street financial firms:

And as David Boaz notes, Newt Gingrich has only now realized that "We have now launched big-government Republicanism." Well, better late than never.