Noted economist Thomas Sowell on what’s going on in Washington on this bail out package. Bush, in my view, misguidedly believes bigger government will help reestablish the ‘free’ market, the Democrats see it as an opportunity to install their social engineering policies.

Amid all the political and media hysteria, national output has declined by less than one-half of one percent. In fact, it may not have declined even that much– or at all– when the statistics are revised later, as they very often are.

We are not talking about the Great Depression, when output dropped by one-third and unemployment soared to 25 percent. What we are talking about is a golden political opportunity for politicians to use the current financial crisis to fundamentally change an economy that has been successful for more than two centuries, so that politicians can henceforth micro-manage all sorts of businesses and play Robin Hood, taking from those who are not likely to vote for them and transferring part of their earnings to those who will vote for them.