…and staying bought. Some thoughts from Glenn Reynolds:

it wasn’t just AIG: Wall Street in general gave profligately to Barack Obama, and to Democrats generally, in 2008. Yet now, when the polls shift, all of those politicians who were so happy to take the cash are suddenly pretending they have never even heard of Wall Street. Instead they’re getting behind punitive taxes, protesters steered to executives’ homes and what both the Financial Times and the New York Daily News have called a “witch hunt” against bankers and brokers.

As Joseph Nocera wrote in the New York Times, “Congress, with its howls of rage, its chaotic, episodic reaction to the crisis, and its shameless playing to the crowds, is out of control. This week, the body politic ran off the rails.” They probably acted nicer when they were asking for money just a few months ago.

If these donations had been given out of love and admiration, Wall Street donors would have reason to feel jilted. But if–as is generally the case with political donations–they were more in the order of protection money, then Wall Street donors may instead feel duped. They might want to ask themselves what protection, exactly, they got for their investment.

And more from Jonah Goldberg:

The Democrats were whorish in their quest for AIG money. But once the money stops flowing and the neighbors are watching, the Democrats suddenly pretend they never wore the naughty librarian outfit for their Wall Street Johns.

As Glenn says, it might be refreshing to see businessmen support politicians who support free markets. Some do, but too many don’t. Because we’ve let the government get out of control, they get far too much financial leverage from their political contributions. As Glenn notes, when an investment in a politician has a much higher payoff than an investment in (say) plant, the country has gone far off the rails from what the Founders intended.

It’s the shade of the great economist, in a knockout.

The country’s in the very best of hands.

Jim Manzi has some useful thoughts:

Commentators on both the Left and Right seem to think that if only we could get the right person to take over these companies and clean up the financial mess, everything would be OK. All it takes is somebody competent and honest, because the answers are so obvious. A rotating series of scapegoats has been created. Paulson? Fool. Geithner? Moron. Liddy? Stooge. It’s funny how their idiocy didn’t seem to surface so much in their prior careers.

Maybe the issue isn’t with the men we’ve selected, but with the problem we’ve asked them to address. Some problems don’t have solutions. The American electorate seems to be intent on re-learning the lesson that how to effectively manage socialized means of production is one of them. The tuition for this course tends to be pretty steep.

I’m sure that Liddy is deeply regetting that he took the job, particularly given the (lack of) financial compensation. The notion that a government, or any one person, is smart enough to run an economy is what Hayek called the fatal conceit.

[Update early evening]

James Pethokoukis:

It’s cliché to say there’s a lot of blame but going around — but there is a lot of blame to go around.

Everywhere you turn in this mess, you can find government right there. To say this is a private-sector failure is ridiculous. It’s like Forrest Gump, where he keeps showing up at historic moments. Everywhere you look in this mess, again and again, you see government.

The most infuriating thing about these clowns, both in Washington and the press, is how a non-existent free market and “deregulation” keeps getting falsely blamed for this as an excuse for bigger government and more regulation.

Tom Maguire (unlike the media) is on the case. I particularly like this comment:

I’m beginning to think the general journalistic reaction to this whole thing is “But I went to Journalism school because they said there was no maaaaath!”

Or logic.