The Christian Science Monitor rightly calls the choices that broke families face moral choices. To paraphrase one "Christian personal finance guru" interviewed -- although bankruptcy is legal, it's not necessarily moral to leave your lenders high & dry. At the same time, says an opponent, multinational megabanks are hardly helpless victims -- their actions sometimes resemble giving a lollipop to a diabetic.

The problem with this sort of coverage is the same problem with most coverage of moral choices. While almost nobody fits cleanly into one camp or the other, only polarization sells papers. Abortion, the environment, racial preferences -- the media features extremists and portrays the debate as being about absolutes, when for most people the real question is about how to draw lines and balance conflicting goals. How to relieve those who really need it (and at whose expense) is as much a moral balancing act than those hotly-debated questions. As the CSM writes, it's no less a moral issue simply because it involves a dollar sign.