Monday Bailout Roundup

Instead of a random movie quote, I think I'll start this week's roundup with some cartoon blogging brought to my attention by Andy Roth at the Club for Growth.

And now, on to the best bailout blogging content of the week, in no particular order...

• From Greg Mankiw, we'll start this party off with some hilarity courtesy of The Onion.
• From Cafe Hayek, the always-excellent Don Boudreaux takes on those that chalk it all up to deregulation.
• In a post I covered on NTU's blog GovernmentBytes!, Radley Balko at The Agitator points out the continuing (and disturbing) lack of transparency in bailout contracting.
• In a long post, Megan McArdle discusses the role of the Federal Reserve in creating bubbles and wonders aloud whether or not it has the knowledge to pop them in the first place.
• David Boaz from Cato@Liberty cites the long line of handout-seekers and asks of bailouts: Where Will They End?
• In the New York Times' Economix blog, Edward Glaeser writes of the need for smarter, not necessarily more, regulation.
• In this long post, Economist View's Mark Thoma asks "What went wrong with securitization?" and ponders the usefulness of covered bonds, a solution that NTU suggested in our initial letter to Congress.
• Arnold Kling responds to a New York Times story about borrowers reacting to incentives to no longer pay their mortgages to take advantage of a potential bailout.

And one newspaper article for good measure...

• Russell Roberts' piece in the Wall Street Journal, entitled "Don't Just Do Something. Stand There.", is a terrific explanation of the dangers of knee-jerk government reactions and its effects on private decisionmaking.