In continuing its long- and short-term policy of promoting a free market economy, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury gave JP Morgan about $30 billion in taxpayer money to aid in its takeover of Bear Stearns, one of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious private investment banks.

The move essentially guarantees Bear Stearns’ financial portfolio, which is in large part based on junk bonds and failed mortgages. The $30 billion that JP Morgan will pay to buy Bear Stearns works out to be about $2 a share, even though last week BS was being traded at over $30 a share.

While this buyout was only possible with obscene amounts of taxpayer money, anyone suggesting that taxpayers now own a part of one of these giant financial institutions is just plain stupid.

This morning’s action was one more in a long line of attempts by the Federal Reserve to help the ailing economy. And by that, they mean the free-market, capitalist, laissez-faire economy, untouched and unmolested by government action.

Last week, the Federal Reserve makes a $200 billion loan to the 20 largest banks, but apparently, this loan did nothing to improve markets. These loans were also to guarantee the banks’ junk bond investments, essentially guaranteeing those who made huge profits from predatory loans should not later pay the price. The government would prefer to ensure that large private financial institutions remain at the forefront of the economy, as they will do, just as long as there is no government interference.

In conjunction with its bailout of the ailing BS, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury have promised unlimited loans to the 20 largest investment banks in the nation. Of course, the introductory APR is 0%, but the government will surely get even with the banks when they raise the interest rate after the first year, probably bringing the rate up to the rarified “never pay us off ever” percent.

The “strong and decisive action” that Mr. Ben S. Bernanke has promised was intended to boost morale throughout the market. Other actions proposed were for President Bush to dance the same tap-dance he performed at his endorsement for John McCain, but that option was shot down by policy-makers when the president insisted on playing his violin while dancing around a fire.

Bernanke has emphasized how the Fed needs to encourage liquid, well-functioning financial markets, which are essential to economic growth. He spoke about how this investment in Bear Stearns, while it can’t possibly make any money for taxpayers and can only cost them huge numbers of undocumented suitcases full of cash, will maximize value and minimize possible disruptions caused by a cash squeeze.

By disruptions, he means that the owners of the buildings where BS and JP Morgan do business will not have to kick out the inhabitants because they can’t pay their bills. By maximizing value, he means nothing at all like the no-bid contracts given to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan. And by liquid markets, he doesn’t mean to call attention to actual liquid, which balances out and becomes equal in measure among all places. Because that would be unfair. And what’s that dirty word: socialism.

Ah, socialized banking, what can’t you do? It won’t save our economy, and socialized medicine certainly won’t ever save the 30 million people without healthcare in our country.

And a final thought: who was the man who was taking the banks and investment firms to the grindstone for their predatory practices, and who was the same man brought to his knees by scandal the same week of such a bailout of those same financial institutions? Public Enemy #1 and no doubt a socialist, Mr. Eliot Spitzer.