Hang them from the lamposts

On Comment is Free, Simon Jenkins wants retribution:

If the mistakes that have collapsed the world's financial markets had been made by statesmen and had led to war, there would be corpses swinging from lampposts. If they had been made by generals, they would be falling on their swords. If they had been made by judges or surgeons or scholars, some framework of professional retribution would be rolling into action. But those responsible for our finances can apparently vanish into the forest like Cheshire cats, leaving only gold-plated grins. Not for them a Hague tribunal or a Hutton inquiry. They are not just good at shedding risk - they shed blame.

Daily Mail comes out against capitalism

"Spivs, sharks and why the champagne corks were popping on Meltdown Monday", reads the Daily Mail headline above a story about hedge funds, short selling and people who actually wanted Lehman Brothers to crash.

Meanwhile, the Guardian asks some unreconstructed lefties what they make of capitalism in crisis. Ken Livingstone says:

Sadly, I don't think this will be the end of capitalism.

Others are more optimistic.

Capitalism - on or off the rails?

Left and right have different takes this morning on the carnage that continues to flow from the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

The Guardian has an extended leader saying:

It is a moment Karl Marx would have relished. From every angle financial capitalism is taking a battering.

Meanwhile, in the Telegraph, Jeff Randall says: "Capitalism - it's painful, but it works". Or does he? In fact, he says:

Soon enough we will discover if the core of Western finance is just an elaborate Ponzi scheme, underpinned only by new waves of suckers, or an imperfect but flexible machinery that, despite its flaws, has the capacity to withstand shocks.

Either way, it seems to me, [US Treasury Secretary] Paulson was right to turn off the tap. If the system is rotten, why shore it up? If it's not, then it will - somehow - survive without more state aid.

The closest Randall comes to an endorsement of capitalism is this:

Nobody said that capitalism was devised to provide soft landings for hopeless losers.

Hardly a ringing endorsement.