what's worse?

Tough and reflective morning here as - This just in - the Fed is continuing to fight an problem started by excessive credit with yet more credit. One question tying together two political proposals/actions. McCain in the debate last night made some promises about the creation of a new bureau of government that would buy back mortgages, essentially allowing an adjustment on the principal of a loan value. This is direct central planning. But what's worse, I think, is what's actually happening (by say of the extended Executive Branch alone) and not just promised: the Federal government is loaning directly to corporations.

One might ask...well, what's the difference? And, at a core level, there is none. But as government money gets spread out and spent - all the while awash with moral hazard - by corporations...the risk of this "investment" by the US government has a very high chance of going bad. And when it does - unlike with McCain's sell-out promises as far as I can tell - the "free market" will be the one to take all the blame. Just as it has been taking - relentlessly - through this whole government-started-and-stoked crisis.

I can't help but feel that even the average person's understanding of capitalism as even a vaguely general "good idea" - however flawed and imperfect that was - is almost extinct, that everyone is implicitly gravitating towards the conception that capitalism is without exception bad. And that, to me, the most troubling thing of all.