What's really scary about this financial crisis...

What to say about the unfolding crisis on Wall Street? In the past two weeks, Lehman Brothers has gone bankrupt, and Morgan Stanley is looking for a buyer. But more earth-shaking is the fact that the feds have nationalized the mortgage market (Fannie and Freddie) and the nation's largest insurer (AIG). This quote from an article in Der Spiegel entitled "The World As We Know It Is Going Down" sadly says it all:

"I fear the government has passed the point of no return," financial historian Ron Chernow told the New York Times. "We have the irony of a free-market administration doing things that the most liberal Democratic administration would never have been doing in its wildest dreams."