[BARRY] RITHOLTZ: Most of Wall Street is furious at what happened. Most of Wall Street aren't involved in mortgage securitization or derivatives or any of the other bad assets that have been blowing up. The average guy -- you know Wall Street is a meritocracy, eat what you kill, as much as you can earn in profits you get to take as a bonus -- and I know a lot of guys, everywhere from Merrill Lynch to Bear Stearns to Lehman, that actually were really profitable. But because this one division was run by rogue pirate traders and reckless derivatives salesmen, they wiped up the entire bonus pool for the entire firm, and then some, all the while engaging in really reckless behavior.

[Kai] Ryssdal: Do you figure we're stuck now as a bailout nation? We're going to be subsidizing banks and car companies and insurance companies for some time to come.

RITHOLTZ: You know we've already seen the trucking industry make hints they want stuff. And we've seen the homebuilders who are key players in this, who just overbuilt everything. They've been asking for a bailout. That's the slippery slope. Once you reward people for their worst behavior, for speculative, irresponsible investing and punish the prudent and the people who are careful with that money. Everybody seems to think it's a free for all. Hey, you've got yours. How do I get mine?

Ryssdal: What's the alternative to these bailouts? I mean should we have just done nothing?

RITHOLTZ: What you do is what the FDIC does when a bank is found to be insolvent. Look what happened with Washington Mutual....

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • The 2009 Obama Administration Bank Bailout Plan • The 2009 Obama Administration Housing Amelioration Plan • The Banking System/Sector • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • The Fiscal Stimulus Package of 2009 • The Possibility of a Bailout for the U.S. Auto Industry • The September 2008 Proposed Henry Paulson 700 Billion Bailout Package • The U.S. Government • Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner

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