NO HELP FOR HOMEOWNERS: In his weekly radio address -- just one day before the government stepped in and bailed out Bear Stearns -- President Bush said, "If we were to pursue some of the sweeping government solutions that we hear about in Washington, we would make a complicated problem even worse -- and end up hurting far more homeowners than we help." In the end, the Bush administration threw out its conservative principles and saved the firm from complete collapse to protect the larger market. As recently as Sunday, Paulson was still insisting that "government intervention" for homeowners would "raise more problems and do more harm than they would do good." Center for American Progress Senior Fellow David M. Abromowitz notes the contradictions in the Bush administration's approach: "Bear Stearns is too important to allow to fail, but millions of homeowners can end up on the street when home prices plummet sharply. The Wall Street holders of overvalued mortgage pools are too important to fail, but homeowners drowning in debt are told to keep paying [no] matter what. Or consider that big oil company tax breaks are too integral to our energy plan, but relief for millions of drivers squeezed by rising gasoline prices would be bad economic policy."