WORST-CASE SCENARIO? Reason's Radley Balko sees more corporate welfare ahead.

Wall Street moguls may be "greedy," as both John McCain and Barack Obama have described them, but at least there are real consequences when their greed becomes excessive. They go out of business.

Except, that is, when the government bails them out. Thus far, in addition to being on the hook for the federal government's own massive debt, taxpayers are also putting up $85 billion to back insurance giant AIG and up to $100 billion each to back Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and we're funding the Bear Stearns backstop. Congress is also expected to approve at least $25 billion in corporate welfare for the big three automakers. You can probably expect more handouts down the road. All of this has some analysts now questioning the U.S. government's bond rating, and worse, wondering whether the government itself may soon collapse under the weight of its own debt.

When you, Joe Citizen, spend frivolously and default on your loans, the bank takes your house. When the government spends your tax dollars frivolously, it simply cooks the books to cover its excesses. When the books are left in ashes, the government just takes more of your money, or it prints more money, leaving the money it hasn't already taken from you devalued. Over the last few weeks, we've learned that you now face the prospect of an additional indignity: When your neighbor's bank spends frivolously and defaults on its loans, the government's going to take your money then too, to keep the bank in business.

Many commenters have blamed all of this on capitalism. This isn't capitalism. It's a peculiar kind of corporatist socialism, where good risks and the resulting profits remain private, but bad risks and the resulting losses are passed on to taxpayers. There's nothing free-market about it.

Neither Barack Obama nor John McCain, nor either party's leadership in Congress, has proposed a reasonable plan to deal with the government's unfunded Social Security and Medicare liabilities. In fact, all have proposed expensive new government programs that can't possibly be funded over the long term. All seem both oblivious to the federal government's impending financial peril and intent on making it worse.

Perversely, all are then simultaneously demanding that they be given greater control over the private sector—because, they gallingly explain, corporations have shown that they can't be left alone to behave in a manner that's fiscally responsible.

As of post time, there still is no agreement in Washington on the bailout, or whatever it is. I've been less than impressed with Senator McCain's calls for bipartisanship, that generally meaning the governing class agreeing to something at the expense of everyone else.