Source: David Lazarus, LA Times ( Free Registration )

Walter Howard was living in Corona a few years ago, he said, when he realized that the country's financial system was being run by crazy people. How else to explain the working-class folk he kept encountering who were receiving loans of $800,000, $900,000, even $1 million to buy homes they couldn't possibly afford? Howard, 50, a computer programmer who now lives in upstate New York, told me he felt vindicated in having bailed out of the California housing market while the getting was good. But he's deeply upset with the government's plan to spend more than $700 billion bailing out financial institutions saddled with increasingly rancid mortgage debt.

Read Full Article: The bailout runs into a populist backlash