“It’s incredible how generous you can be with other people’s money.” —Star Parker

“So, yes, our recent financial turmoil does suggest failure—a failure to truly practice capitalism and a failure to accept and believe in the value, appropriateness and morality of a limited government and maximum personal responsibility.” —Larry Elder

“Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac do not deserve to be bailed out, but neither do workers, families and businesses deserve to be put through the economic wringer by a collapse of credit markets, such as occurred during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Neither do the voters deserve to be deceived on the eve of an election by the notion that this is a failure of free markets that should be replaced by political micro-managing.” —Thomas Sowell

“Treasury Secretary Paulson, asked about conservative complaints that his rescue program amounts to socialism, said, essentially: This is not socialism, this is necessary. That non sequitur might be politically necessary, but remember that government control of capital is government control of capitalism.” —George Will

“It is an affront to the nation that some of the people who brought on the crisis (and financially and politically benefited from the status quo) were asking the questions at the Banking Committee hearing. They should have been in the witness chair. [Sen. Chris] Dodd said the crisis was ‘entirely foreseeable and preventable.’ Then why didn’t he try to prevent it? He should have been answering questions about the PAC contributions he received from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, (according to opensecrets.org, he’s the Senate’s no. 1 recipient of campaign contributions, $133,900, Barack Obama is no. 3, $105,849), his sweetheart Countrywide Financial mortgage rate and whether they influenced his inattentiveness to the growing mortgage crisis.” —Cal Thomas