No Blank-Check Bailout

The bill for decades of American greed has just come due, and deadbeats at every level of society are trying to avoid paying their share.

From street-level avaricious buyers of bigger homes than they could afford with zero down and mortgage brokers and banks willing to bilk them to the covetous upper-echelon insurance companies, Wall Street houses and hedge funds that packaged all-but-worthless indebtedness at a markup for free-lunch investors, all eyes are now on Congress to pick up the tab with taxpayer money--to buy all that trash for cash without any safeguards.

Moreover, it has to be done in a super-hurry with no questions asked or the freeloaders in the markets will go into a swoon, as they did today.

Before Congress gives the Bush Administration an economic blank check comparable to the 2002 carte blanche to shoot up the Middle East, saner Senators are asking for more supervision of the Treasury handouts, more equity from the Wall Street casinos that lost their bets and more emphasis on helping responsible home owners who got caught in the squeeze.

Henry Paulson may tell them the sky is falling, but that doesn't mean that our lawmakers have to respond like Henny Pennies in a panic.