Once in awhile, someone comes up with an idea of stunning clarity and extraordinary brilliance and simplicity. Of course, the devil is in the details, and ideas this good never seem to get implemented.

This morning on TV, conservative icon George Will introduced "Will's Law." Will was sitting at a table with Donna Brazile, Robert Reich and Paul Krugman. Will said that everyone at the table would agree with his idea--I thought he was being sarcastic for a second, but it turns out that everyone DID agree that his idea was good. When you have three big-time liberals and George Will all agreeing on something, it's time to either run for the hills, or pay attention.

Here it is: Whenever you have a massive government intervention on behalf of a private company, the compensation of the executives of the company should be limited to a new maximum--equivalent to the salary of a GS-15, representing the highest US government standard salary. I think the highest GS-15 salary is around $135K right now.

As someone pointed out, we will soon see how badly Wall Street wants US Government money or backstops if these new rules were put in place.

It's sickening to me that the US taxpayers are ultimately on the hook for $29 billion of the $30 billion in loan guarantees that were made to keep Bear Stearns out of bankruptcy. Guess who massively benefits from that? First, it's Bear bondholders, who could have easily been wiped out or nearly wiped out in a Bear bankruptcy. It helped Bear stockholders, who don't feel like they were bailed out, after going from $160 to $100 to $50 to $2, and now back to $10. But it is a bailout to the extent that the stock would have been $0 in a Bear bankruptcy. Last I checked, 10 is a lot more than zero. And of course, it was a big gift to JP Morgan. We shall see how valuable the gift turns out to be, but if things go poorly, US taxpayers are ultimately on the hook for $29 billion. You would think that the Fed should have grabbed some upside for that kind of risk, but no...as taxpayers, we are on the hook for the downside only and get no upside if things work out really well for JP Morgan. Capitalism, schmapitalism. Utter hooey.

Many people say that a Bear bankruptcy would have caused a systemic meltdown of our financial system, but I don't believe the stakes were that high. Since when does an investment bank, not even one of the four biggest, become "too big to fail"? There would have been pain, to be sure, and turmoil, but sometimes, you have to let your kid fall off the bike.

And if a Bear bankruptcy could have caused a catastrophic melt-down of our whole financial system, then we need to ask ourselves how we let a private company that is relatively lightly regulated (i.e., compared to commercial banks) take risks that pose that big of a threat to our whole system.

If anyone can pose that big of a risk to our financial system by making private investment decisions and demonstrating extraordinarily poor risk management skills, then they should be heavily regulated and those risks should be mitigated. This is the essence of financial regulation; to prevent systemic catastrophes. We don't let people or private companies build intercontinental ballistic missiles in their backyards for a reason.

It's despicable when people who rail against welfare and preach personal self-reliance for their whole careers run with their hands outstretched to the government when they are on the ropes, and cloak it in the pusillanimous excuse of "the system must be saved."

Are we a capitalist society or not? We can't have it both ways. Do we let private companies fail, or do we save them? Do we let people and companies who have made poor decisions suffer the consequences of their actions, or do we bail them out? The hypocrisy is stunning; the stench is manifest.