Flutterby™! : Bailout madness

Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone: Secrets and Lies of the Bailout.

Worst of all, the Implicit Guarantee has led to a dangerous shift in banking behavior. With an apparently endless stream of free or almost-free money available to banks – coupled with a well-founded feeling among bankers that the government will back them up if anything goes wrong – banks have made a dramatic move into riskier and more speculative investments, including everything from high-risk corporate bonds to mortgage­backed securities to payday loans, the sleaziest and most disreputable end of the financial system.

Yep, the leeches sucked off the taxpayer hugely, but, worse, now know that no matter what trouble they get in to, crony politics will bail them out again.

Via a whole bunch of places, here's MeFi's link to it.