Let the Government solve your problems

That's the subject line in an advertising e-mail from a "Grant Resource Center" Mac Mail stuck in my Junk file.

This at the end of a week in which we're watching a panic-stricken federal government trying to bail out as its past "solutions" to financial matters are simultaneously collapsing.

It was some 30 years ago that Howard Ruff described

the Twentieth Century's three greatest lies in ascending order of immensity: (1) My wife doesn't understand me, (2) my check is in the mail, and (3) I'm from the government and I'm here to help you.

For the results of some of that help, see the results of government "help" in the housing markets to the banking industry in this New York Times graphic.