The Washington Post reports today that the next round of bailouts will be for the insurance industry. The article tells us that we can expect similar bailout conditions for the insurance industry as were given to the banks that received capital from the government.

In other words, the insurers will be given government funds at far below market rates. This is a direct handout from taxpayers to the shareholders at these institutions, as well as the top executives whose incompetence brought them to the edge of ruin. While the Post tells us that there will be limits on executive pay, these restrictions were put in just to fool children and reporters, serious people know that they are a joke.

Let's stand up for Joe the Plumber and stop giving tax dollars to the incredibly rich.

Alan Greenspan has finally acknowledged that he may have made some mistakes in allowing an $8 trillion housing bubble to grow unchecked. (Look for rivers flowing upstream.)

This modest act of contrition should be welcomed, but analysts have been far too quick to describe Greenspan as a prisoner of his free market ideology and the current crisis as a story of the free market running wild. This is far too generous a description of Greenspan and the current economic situation.

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In case you've missed the hype, IOUSA is a documentary making the case that the U.S. budget is hopelessly out of control and that our current spending patterns will bankrupt our children. The film features such noteworthy characters as Alan "Bubbles" Greenspan, Robert "Don't Regulate Credit Default Swaps" Rubin, and former presidential candidate Ron Paul.

This film should be viewed as part of a larger effort to dismantle Social Security and Medicare, the country's core safety net programs. The reality is that our budget is essentially fine, it is our health care system that is out of control. But fixing health care would require going after the drug companies, the insurance companies, and highly paid medical specialists. But those folks are all powerful, so the IOUSA crew went after old people instead.

You can get CEPR's movie review here.

Last week, Associated Press ran a piece profiling several potential candidates for the next Treasury Secretary. The candidates had one feature in common with all prior Treasury Secretaries, they are all white men. This fact is especially egregious because one of the most obviously qualified candidates is a woman: Sheila Bair, the current chairperson of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).

During ordinary times, the FDIC is a relative backwater, having to deal with minor policy tweaks or the failure of a small bank here or there. However, the housing crash has put the FDIC at center stage. Ms. Bair has been forced to arrange the takeover or merger of many of the country's largest banks, including Wachovia, Washington Mutual, and IndyMac. The FDIC has been a key actor in containing the credit crisis.

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Okay, as we all now know, almost everything about Joe the Plumber is a lie. He doesn't own a plumbing business and apparently is not even licensed as a plumber, but he does raise a legitimate concern about "spreading the wealth around." The only problem is that in this country, when the government spreads the wealth around it usually means redistributing it upward.

That is certainly the case with the hundreds of billions of dollars being used to bail out the banks. The public has a real interest in keeping the banking system functioning. It has zero interest in subsidized the pay checks of wealthy bank executives or enriching the bank's shareholders, which Secretary Paulson is now doing.

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