Robert Novak, one of my favorite political commentators reveals the inside scoop on who made the decision to bail out Bear Sterns and why there is cause for concern. He says the decision was “approved in private by unelected officials” and reports that “a Fed official conceded privately this week that “we may have crossed a line” in jumping into Bear Stearns.”

His column today starts out making this claim:

The Federal Reserve’s unprecedented bailout of Bear Stearns was crafted not at the White House or Treasury, but in secret by a New York central banker whose name is unknown to Washington power brokers and was a Clinton administration presidential appointee.

Later on he says:

If they had blundered into financial failure, the community banks complained, they would not be bailed out, but instead investigated and prosecuted. “Too big to fail,” therefore, becomes “too big to be punished.”

For those not familiar, Novak is a respected conservative journalist who is noted for bringing to light the inner workings of the “Establishment”. So, it’s not paranoia that I’m passing along here.