April 14, 2008

Speaking of weak opinion pieces in the pages of the Times, Felix Salmon once again enjoys a field day at Ben Stein's expense:

Stein also can't conceive of a world in which some people suffer losses without other people (invariably investment bankers) finding themselves with enormous gains. "The false god of deregulation allows unscrupulous people to loot the system," he says, convinced that a cabal of cackling capitalists is somewhere cheering the present crisis, making billions of dollars every time another bank implodes.

The really funny bit is where Stein contrasts the winners and the losers. On the winning side you have "Wall Street", while on the losing side you have "the people who were wiped out in Bear Stearns stock", as though such people were widows in Omaha rather than the very investment bankers who Stein thinks are gaming the system so that they always win.