David Wearing writes an informative and compelling commentary on the recent crisis in the financial markets on his blog:

Big Finance has argued for liberal financial markets and generally to be left alone by government. But plainly Big Finance does not object to state intervention in principle, having just accepted over $300bn of cheap public money. What Big Finance wants is for the government to back off when it is making a profit and step in when it is making a loss. This is not about liberalism vs interventionism. Its about what suits economic power at any given time. ...

The reality is that economic questions are settled in favour of material interests, not philosophical principles. The moral-philosophical question of relevance here is whether we can accept a socio-economic settlement designed to benefit elite interests, or whether we should demand one that serves the common interest. Once that fairly straightforward question is answered, the answers to smaller questions on how and when to “intervene” in our economy will flow quite easily and naturally.

In contrast to the usual stereotypes of single mothers, fraudulent disability benefit claimants and the like, the phenomenon of "corporate welfare" goes largely unnoticed in the public sphere. Yet it effectively represents a massive redistribution of wealth away from the general public and towards those at the very top of the economic pyramid. In essence, a silent, undeclared class war is being waged - on behalf of the rich. Wearing's piece provides an excellent outline of this process, and puts recent events into badly-needed context. Read the whole thing here.