As voters, we get agitated about issues that are either more morally charged (eg, reproductive rights) or tangibly felt (eg, gasoline prices) or universally compelling (eg, global warming).

But as voters we don’t pay attention to the decidely unsexy arcana of things like financial sector regulation. This was a simple matter of [Normal Human Pursuit of Material Gain] + [Prolonged Poor Regulatory Oversight by the Federal Government] = [Large-Scale Disaster]

Next time you get to vote at any level–local, state, federal–it’s worth paying attention to where politicians stand on the boring stuff.

As to ‘why the bailout?’ – because the alternative to spending billions to fix messes created by a few unregulated capitalists is to return to a barter economy…anyone willing to give me a set of clothes in exchange for my pet pig ‘Sneezy’?