My political rant- delivered mostly by Jon Stewart

We have a bailout plan. BOOOOO!!! Despite their very different reasons for doing so, I am happy that Utah representatives Jim Matheson and Rob Bishop (my high school debate coach and mentor as very young man, as well as my representative in Congress), a Democrat and Republican respectively, voted against it. I even give kudos to those House Republicans who stuck to their principles, along with many House Democrats who took a risk by bucking leadership in their opposition. Giving $700 billion to the Wall Street banks that created this mess, plus the $150 billion sweetner (see Jon Stewart below) to bribe House members into voting for it- can you say earmark, or earmark-like thing- is like giving a guy in AA a fifth of Jack for being sober for a week. Add to that McCain's bi-polar take on the matter . . . The end result of this will be that people with sub-prime mortages past the sub-prime phase will get little or no relief, but those at the top will get will get to keep the house in the Hamptons. The U.S. taxpayer will get a lot of worthless paper- all the worthless paper that caused the banks to fail.

On a more reasoned note, I like very much Mark Stricherz's post on America magazine's In All Things blog entitled Bad Regulation Caused the Financial Panic (Or What Catholic Social Thought Can Teach Our Parties). In the end, he turns to number 2425 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which reads:

"The Church has rejected the totalitarian and atheistic ideologies associated in modem times with 'communism' or 'socialism.' She has likewise refused to accept, in the practice of 'capitalism,' individualism and the absolute primacy of the law of the marketplace over human labor. Regulating the economy solely by centralized planning perverts the basis of social bonds; regulating it solely by the law of the marketplace fails social justice, for 'there are many human needs which cannot be satisfied by the market.' Reasonable regulation of the marketplace and economic initiatives, in keeping with a just hierarchy of values and a view to the common good, is to be commended."