Mike Flynn at Reason has a dispassionate — and very readable — piece on the roots of the financial services mess, at which Congress proposes to throw $700 billion in taxpayer funds.

Another great column from George Will today, on the House’s “vote against rashness.” With a conservative’s sense of history, he traces some of the policy choices that brought us to today’s crisis:

Suppose that in 1979 the government had not engineered the first bailout of Chrysler (it, Ford and GM are about to get $25 billion in subsidized loans). Might there have been a more sober approach to risk throughout corporate America?

Suppose there had never been implicit government backing of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Better yet, suppose those two had never existed — there was homeownership before them, just not at a level that the government thought proper. Absent Fannie and Freddie — absent government manipulation of the housing market — would there have developed the excessive diversion of capital into the housing stock?

But really, if you haven’t been reading George Will this year–on the problems with both Obama and McCain, on the automobile bailout, on local government fiscal crises–go here. And to read what he says about his new book, go here (pdf)

The Senate is scheduled to vote tonight on the Wall Street bailout package, which now includes a provision to relieve taxpayers of a scheduled $60 billion or so jump in annual alternative minimum tax payments.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer noted, “there’s no doubt in my mind that the Senate added this [AMT provision] because they thought that’s the only way they could get it passed.”

Thus, despite the outpouring of public opposition to the bailout, Congress is determined to rig the vote and grab the people’s money anyway it can. The Senate is essentially saying to the public: “We won’t impose a $60 billion tax hike on you next year if you let us bailout Wall Street. And don’t worry about the $700 billion, we’ll just tack that on to the $5 trillion in public debt that your children and grandchildren already owe.”

There are too many insider experts and economists driving this debate, and too little recognition inside the Beltway about the basic injustice of a bailout. As many callers to the talk shows are saying, the government wants to take $700 billion from average hard-working families who followed the rules and give it to people who made bad, irresponsible, and even disastrous decisions.

Many economists are saying: “Well, I’m usually against intervention and subsides, but this case is special.” But that’s what they always say. The hunt for supposed “market failures” is a full-time pursuit for many modern economists, and it’s mainly nonsense. Back in January the administration and many top-flight economists created a similar crisis atmosophere, inducing Congress to pass the ridiculous “stimulus” bill. What did that achieve other that putting us $150 billion further into debt?

Dieter: “Ve are Nihilists, Lebowski. Ve believe in nothing! Nothing!”

–Joel and Ethan Coen, “The Big Lebowski”

“And let us recognize above all the 228 who voted no — the authors of this revolt of the nihilists. They showed the world how much they detest their own leaders and the collected expertise of the Treasury and Fed.”

–David Brooks, “The Revolt of the Nihilists,” September 29, 2008

That’s David Brooks tearing his hair out yesterday over the failure of the bailout bill. It’s interesting that Brooks characterizes people who resist the idea of privatized profits and socialized loss as “nihilists.” If you’re not willing to let Brooks’ “new establishment” play with up to $700 billion in tax dollars, if you don’t offer up your wallet the moment an expert cries “crisis!”–why then, you must believe in nothing! Nothing at all!

Interesting, but maybe not all that surprising. Brooks is, after all, the architect of National Greatness Conservatism, the philosophy that says “American purpose can only find its voice in Washington.” Inside Washington: purpose, meaning, fulfillment–glory. Outside Washington: a vast and pitiless void. “All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state,” as a prominent theorist of national greatness once put it.

Other than partying pirates holding thirty-some Russian tanks captive against an international armada of warships, the Big Abortive Bailout of Aught-Eight seems to have pushed every other news story out of the headlines. That’s almost certainly the case for education, where few stories are attracting much attention, and the edublogosphere has been eerily quiet.

Unfortunately for both the country and education-policy peeps, there’s a good chance our economic problems, and political efforts to make them worse, will continue to dominate our news for the foreseeable future. Thankfully, we here at Cato will be giving education a chance to get back on your mind, even if for just a few hours, bringing in a man whose ability to rile is not bound by anything as inconsequential as mere news! He is Charles Murray, and his new book, Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America’s Schools Back to Reality, has been getting lots of people’s goats and just not letting go.

On Wednesday, October 8, Murray will be at Cato defending his book’s thesis that we all have different intellectual endowments, and only a relative few of us are well-served by a school system that shoves everyone into ivy-covered walls. Responding will be Christopher B. Nelson, president of St. John’s College in Annapolis, MD, a school that features about as pure a liberal arts education—the kind of schooling Murray argues must of us don’t need—as you’ll find.

Bailouts, frankly, get pretty boring after awhile; Paulson this, $700 billion of your hard-earned tax dollars that, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But one thing that never gets dull is debating how best to educate our children. So register to hear Charles Murray today, and get ready to cogitate over something other than our economic mess—well, at least the immediate mess—come October 8.

Sorry, this blog has nothing to do with the Wall Street mess, despite the title.

Instead, consider this tiny story in the WaPo that reveals the general inanity of our subsidized nation. The article, “Federal Grant to Provide Help To Low-Income Students” reports on a $1 million federal grant to the state of Virginia. 

Will the grant money be used to buy books for poor kids, or to help pay their tuition? Nope. It will go to hire bureaucrats to train kids on how to grab more education subsidies: “The agency plans … to help educate students about college, with a sizable focus on how to obtain financial aid.”

For more about the follies of federal granting, see Federal Aid to the States.

If you find the title of this post provocative, you’ll be interested in a Cato book forum on Friday, October 10th.

In The Crime of Reason, Nobel laureate in physics Robert Laughlin argues that intellectual property laws and government security demands threaten the development of new knowledge. Without change, we risk bequeathing our heirs a world where knowledge is criminalized and our intellectual tradition of unfettered inquiry is lost.

Join us for a fascinating inquiry into the role of information and information rules in our society, featuring comment from Thomas Syndor of the Progress & Freedom Foundation, at noon on Friday, October 10th. Luncheon to follow.

You can register for the event here.