The house is on fire

There are plenty of people who have noticed, in recent years, that when they lost their homes to foreclosure or were forced into bankruptcy because of crippling credit-card debt, no one in the government was there to rescue them.

But when Goldman Sachs — a company whose average employee still made more than $350,000 last year, even in the midst of a depression — was suddenly faced with the possibility of losing money on the unregulated insurance deals it bought for its insane housing bets, the government was there in an instant to patch the hole.

That's the essence of the bailout: rich bankers bailing out rich bankers, using the taxpayers' credit card.

Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone, March 2009