John, I couldn’t disagree more. If this crisis turns out as badly as it might, there’s a case to be made that those congressional Republicans who voted against the bailout deserve to be remembered as the Smoots and the Hawleys of our time (yes, yes, the Democrats deserve blame too, although on that particular day, rather less). There is a rational case to be made against the bailout (and people like you are making it), and there is also a decent case to be made that the bailout should have been weighted heavily in favour of direct equity participation in the banks (that happens to be what I think). But (with exceptions) rational arguments are not what I heard from the Republican opposition to the bailout in congress that day. What I heard instead was faux populism, real igorance, sour Babbitry and at least one pronouncement so nutty (about Bolsheviks, as I recall) that, for one dark moment, I thought I has stumbled upon a meeting of unusually loopy Randians. What I also heard was the sound of the McCain campaign going down in flames. What a shambles.