According to Forbes, the bailout has the U.S. government on the hook for $5 trillion. And what has this bailout bought us? Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson says that it has improved our stability. Has he not watched the market continually fall? For the benefit of Mr. Paulson, I have helpfully provided a graph of the Dow Jones Industrial Average over the last year:

Where’s the stability in this picture? Almost every day there is a new company declaring that it needs help from the Fed.

It’s time the Fed and the Treasuring just step back. Companies that made poor choices will fail. That is what real capitalism is all about–letting companies which made bad decisions feel the economic pain of those decisions. As things stand right now, the Fed and Treasury are just prolonging the inevitable.