Something I haven't heard before concerning the Bear Stearns "bailout", courtesy of the adventure capitalist himself, Jim Rogers:

"If the system is so fragile that the fifth-largest investment bank can bring it all down, then you better go ahead and have the problems now. What if three or five years from now it is the largest investment bank that fails or the largest five or six banks that fail? Then there will be a disaster."

Very valid point. If we are to believe the official explanation from the Fed, that a Bear Stearns bankruptcy would have caused major damage to the economy, then one has the right to ask: why is the fifth-largest IB so crucial to the economy? The alternative would be to not believe the Fed and conclude that the reason Bear was bailed out was not to save the economy. What could be the real reason then? Jim Rogers' interpretation of things: "The government has been intervening to save all its friends for a decade or so rather than letting the market work properly."