Diverse Opinions

Paul Krugman: What we want is a system in which banks own the downs as well as the ups. And the road to that system runs through nationalization.

Michael Winship: On Capitol Hill, Money Is the Root of All Hypocrisy

David Brooks: The nation’s economy is an interwoven context that we all share. To stabilize this communal landscape, sometimes you have to give money to those who have been foolish.

Gerald P. O'Driscoll Jr: If a bank is too big to fail, then it is simply too big. Those institutions need to be downsized until their failure would no longer constitute a systemic risk. Then we can discuss how to untangle the government and the major banks, and create a banking system of genuinely private institutions.

Jim Hightower: It is this self-aggrandizing corporate culture that must be changed. Sadly, Geithner, Summers — and Obama — have instead advanced that culture by failing to hold some of its worst practitioners accountable for their enormously destructive actions.

Mark Shields: Does Wall Street Know No Shame? Wow, are we ever slow learners. At his second inaugural, some 72 years ago, President Franklin Roosevelt told us what we are still painfully learning in daily headlines about Wall Street financiers pocketing hundreds of billions of dollars in U.S. taxpayer bailouts but still rewarding themselves with close to $20 billion in year-end bonuses. This is what FDR said: "We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we now know that it is bad economics."