FOLLOW THE MONEY - ELECTION 2008

I can support it because our life savings are invested in the market and in the bank and we're leaving them there because to withdraw them would make things worse. That's literally putting our money where our mouth is, a conservative principle by the way.

I can support it because the fact that a whole lot of people, Republicans and Democrats in Congress and the White House, over the last two or three decades made some very bad decisions and, because many people acted irresponsibly or unconscionably, are now realizing the consequences. We can't undo those decisions or the results, so we have to do what we have to do to fix what is broken and do it better. To act rather than sit back and do nothing other than assign blame is also a conservative principle.

I can support it because I have run a business and pulled it out of what appeared to be hopeless financial insolvency.

So long as assets outnumber liabilities, it is never hopeless and sometimes thinking outside the box and willingness to make educated gambles is the prudent thing to do. The USA has tremendous assets both in material wealth and in the ability and vision of its people. Recognition of that is also a conservative principle.

I can support it because our life savings are invested in the market and in the bank and we're leaving them there because to withdraw them would make things worse. That's literally putting our money where our mouth is, a conservative principle by the way.

If we had followed the free market principle all along, we wouldn't be in the mess. But we didn't. Congress, assisted by a few Presidents, has manipulated the free market resulting in all the bad investments and loans.

Regarding "Regulating Banks: Enough Already" (Viewpoints, Feb. 7), let's see if I have it straight. Deregulation in the 1980's under President Reagan led to the savings and loan scandal, which led to the Federal bailout, which led to increasing the national debt -- and in the process caused some people to be led to jail.

An agreement between the Clinton administration and congressional Republicans, reached during all-night negotiations which concluded in the early hours of October 22, sets the stage for passage of the most sweeping banking deregulation bill in American history, lifting virtually all restraints on the operation of the giant monopolies which dominate the financial system.

In fact, Mr. McCain championed financial deregulation for years. In 1999, he supported legislation crafted by Phil Gramm, then a senator from Texas, that removed Depression-era walls between banking, investment and insurance companies -- allegedly to make the country's financial institutions more competitive and free to take entrepreneurial risks in the marketplace. (Many Democrats, including Sen. Joe Biden, the party's vice presidential nominee, supported this ill-considered legislation as well.)

The result was the creation of a free-market free-for-all of banks approving home mortgages to people who clearly couldn't afford to repay them if real-estate values stopped rising. It also spurred investment banks to buy and sell packages of mortgages after they had convinced themselves that by "spreading the risk," bad loans could become less-bad loans. Then they bought insurance contracts from gargantuan insurance companies like AIG to spread the risk even further. Investors banked on the fact that if real-estate values stopped rising (impossible!), and more and more people defaulted on their mortgages, Fannie and Freddie would pick up the tab. And, if Fannie and Freddie went down, there would be -- The-Ultimate-Bearer-Of-All-Risks -- the lowly taxpayers.

The downside to that is they won't be able to blame Karl Rove for whatever conclusions they reach.

The New York Times looked at contributions from Fannie and Freddie's boards of directors and lobbyists, who are technically not employees. That analysis found Fannie and Freddie-related contributors gave $116,000 to John McCain and his related committees, compared with $16,000 to Obama and his related committees.