PJBuchanan on The Bailout

He's right.

No, it is not fair. Yet, Treasury’s Hank Paulson may be right. To save the sheep who might have been wiped out in a general financial panic, we may have to save the pigs

Buchanan is a historian, and reminds us of a few inconvenient facts.

-the Big Apple had to be rescued by Gerald Ford.

-Marion Barry’s Washington, D.C., was next in line at the cashier’s window

-In the Reagan era, it was Chrysler. Later that decade, Citibank, Chase-Manhattan and Bank of America were staring into the abyss, as Latin American regimes

-Then came the Mexican and Asian financial crises and the U.S.-IMF bailouts of the 1990s

And guess what? "Flyover Country" inhabitants paid the most--but not necessarily in taxes.

Who ultimately paid for the Mexican bailout? Florida tomato growers wiped out by Mexican producers, the price of whose tomatoes was chopped two-thirds by the devaluation. U.S. autoworkers who saw Ford and Delphi plants shuttered as new Ford and Delphi plants opened in Mexico. U.S. textile workers whose mills closed and jobs vanished.

Middle-class American families have paid and paid—in lost jobs, lower wages, a falling median income—to save the big banks from the consequences of their follies. And those bank bailouts are behind the trade deficits that set five records in the Bush era, reached 6 percent of GDP, forced huge U.S. borrowings from abroad and ravaged the dollar

If there's any good news, PJB speculates that at least McPain and Obamamamama's high-spending promises may be voided by the pile-on of Gummint debt this bailout will occasion.

I think PJB is an optimist.