Bear Stearns should be left to die just like Drexel Burnham Lambert

This New York Times op-ed hits the nail on the head.

We didn’t bail out Michael Milken’s greed 20 years ago; why should Bear Stearns be different today?

“For the government to print money at the expense of taxpayers as opposed to requiring or going about a receivership and wind-down of any insolvent institutions should be troubling to taxpayers and regulators alike,” said Josh Rosner, an analyst at Graham Fisher & Company and an expert on mortgage securities. “The Fed has now crossed the line in a very clear way on ‘moral hazard,’ because they have opened the door to the view that they are required to save almost any institution through non-recourse loans — except the government doesn’t have the money and it destroys the U.S.’s reputation as the broadest, deepest, most transparent and properly regulated capital market in the world.”

The hell with ’em, I say.

But, Ben Bernanke, The Worst Fed Head Since Greenspan™, will bail out Bear Stearns. And bail it out even more than he has already, if he so desires.