Hilzoy gets bailout all wrong — overlooks need for ‘tough’ tough love

Over at Washington Monthly, Hilzoy says, in essence, “Now is the time for all good liberals to come to the defense of their country Wall Street.

That includes disparaging a provocative, if too conservative-philosophy based, blog post about personal responsibility by

Here’s my response:

Hilz, further comment re Riehl — it’s credit-fueled greed on “Main Street” as well as Wall Street that got us into the mortgage related issues in the first place.

Many mortgages now gone sour were not by naive first-time buyers. Instead, they were by:
1. Second-time buyers wanting a McMansion, and in part for the myth of home equity;
2. People buying a second, third, fourth, etc. home for rental income;
3. People buying homes to “flip.”

We don't bail out stockholders (even in the earlier, individual company bailouts, bondholders kept their preferred positions over stockholders). Why should we bail out these types of mortgage owners?

Seriously, as Barack Obama and some other black leaders have talked about parental responsibility, why shouldn’t liberals talk about the need for fiscal responsibility, and the indulged fiscal irresponsibility of the past, even if the “tough love” message has a large measure of “tough”?