Don’t bail—but let banks fail?
We’re “singing a different tune” now that it is America that is in a financial crisis.
Today’s NY Times:
[C]leaning up the banks’ bad assets, without extracting a heavy price for the bank managers, shareholders and their lenders, is exactly what Mr. Summers and Mr. Geithner warned against during the Asian financial crisis.
“We told the Asians that they had to be willing to let banks and companies fail,” said Jeffrey Garten, a professor at the Yale School of Management and a top official in the Clinton administration. “We warned that there was great moral hazard if governments just bailed them out.”
“And now,” he said, “we are doing the polar opposite of our advice.”
Prometheus Unbound 
Nassim Taleb spoke out in Davos about banks and the moral hazard of bailouts.
He and Nouriel Roubini were both interviewed at CNBC recently, but soundbite journalists are incapable of handling their views sadly.