It's very difficult to argue with Robert Reich's assessment that here in the US we take social ownership of business failures, but steadfastly privatize their successes. It's clearly in our national best interest to keep our vital institutions from failing, but it really raises the question: how exactly does it serve our national interest to concentrate the benefits of these institutions in private hands--or at least to the extent we do today?

You get the sense that in any other nation we would be gripped in a deep self-examination of our core economic principles and in the throes of a major upheaval of how we manage our nation's wealth. Perhaps this will only come if the situation turns far more dire for the middle class?