Remarkably, even as the federal government is dishing out hundreds of billions of dollars to the financial industry, the Washington Post still refuses to note this dangerous act of protectionism. In an article discussing warnings from the WTO about the dangers of protectionism, the Post only mentions completely trivial acts of government protection. The inefficiencies caused by the government's subsidies for the financial industry are almost certainly hundreds of times larger than sorts of protection discussed in the article. Protection for the financial industry also has the effect of massively distorting wage structures in the economy, since high-paid executives at protected financial firms can earn millions or even tens of millions of dollars a year. This pulls workers away from industries that don't enjoy the same sort of government subsidies.
--Dean Baker