Privatizing Profit, Socializing Risk

"We should not try to return to ‘business as usual’. It is business as usual which has got us into the mess. What we need is a paradigm shift. We cannot simply return to the old mixed economy, balancing the rampant follies of the so-called free market with appropriate government ownership and intervention. We must address the underlying issues. Behind the sudden new squeals for help from the very rich we must listen to the long-term cries from the very poor."
-NT Wright (You can read the full text of the speech on the Empire Remixed blog).

Amazing how quickly those cries get answered isn't it? Corporations, banks, and financiers start floundering because of their own greed and stupidity... and it's the one crisis that governments all over the world actually respond to -- and quickly. Debt relief? Global warming? AIDS in Africa? Nah.