Fiatch

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“Like so many others, we believe that government should largely remove itself from functioning markets. But in a case such as this, where a market has been seriously damaged due to regulatory excess, an obligation exists to help undo the damage. That’s the case now with the subprime crisis and housing collapse, both largely due to decades of congressional incompetence. With world credit markets seized up and little to show for piecemeal U.S. efforts to deal with the growing financial panic, Paulson and others on the Bush financial team late last week shifted course, crafting a systematic answer to the markets’ meltdown. This was leadership writ large. Paulson spent decades on Wall Street as a trader and top executive at one of its flagship firms, Goldman Sachs, and his experience and market wisdom showed. His controversial decision to create a new financial entity, modeled broadly on the 1980s-era Resolution Trust Corp., may just spell an end to this financial crisis. Congress, which has mostly sat on the sidelines during this crisis, should approve it right away.”