We'll give you a 2% discount on that $23,000 bill if we get a check within ten days....

The US Government has become the nation's largest mortgage lender and the nation's largest insurance company.

This, as my blogging colleagues at Delawareliberal point out, is the process of privatizing gain and socializing loss.

My friend Brian Miller has toted up the cost of just the last week's bailouts of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and AIG:

By my calculation, the government has added $3 trillion to the national debt in the nationalization/bailouts of Fannie, Freddie, Bear, and AIG just in the last 10 days. That's about $23,000 for every tax return in the United States....

$23,000. $23,000. $23,000.

I can't get my mind around that. In the course of two weeks my government has just sucked the cost of a new car, or a year's college tuition for one of my children, or .... Well, you can fill in the blanks.

$23,000. If the government taking over these giants is such sound policy, how come the markets keep tumbling?

$23,000. And I'm supposed to trust Senator Barack Obama, who has been the second largest recipient of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae political contributions in the last ten years, to clean up this mess? Yep. Right.

$23,000. Who said they were too large to fail? And why?

$23,000.

$23,000.

When are American voters going to wake up to the fact that all we have done here is to transfer liability from those who took unreasonable risks to those who didn't?

Answer: apparently never.