The U.S. House of Representatives on Friday afternoon okayed the financial rescue bill drawn up and passed by the Senate, and President George W. Bush quickly signed it. So ended the era of free-market economics as it had been known since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.

Wall Street voted with its feet, moving out of equities and erasing earlier gains of as much as 300 points on the Dow, then send the index reeling down as much as another 500 points Monday.

Perhaps that was because the view on and from Wall Street will never be quite the same.

There are now no independent investment banks on Wall Street. The $100,000 annual bonuses for mailroom employees at Goldman Sachs will now fade into legend, not to mention seven figure payouts the top talent got. There will be 10,000 or 20,000 or 30,000 fewer people working on Wall Street, and those who remain will likely have lost some of their endearing propensity for waggishness. It will now be open season on executive compensation, not only on Wall Street, but everywhere.

The government is now in control on Wall Street. That means all financial innovation will cease.

Tom Wolfe's "masters of the universe," whom as he recently wrote in The New York Times had already abandoned Wall Street for the hedge fund capital of Greenwich, Conn., are likely scouting out office space offshore, perhaps in London, where a state-controlled economy does not yet exist.

Somebody once said that money, defined roughly as wealth, like matter, can neither be created nor destroyed; it may only be earned, spent or stolen.

People--"fat cats" on Wall Street and "fat asses" on Main St. alike--who did not and could not earn the money they spent spent it anyhow. The government is now bailing them out with money it will expropriate from the people who did earn it. That is redistribution of wealth, the central definition of a Marxist economy.

It did not have to be so. The Administration and some in Congress have been warning of just such a financial meltdown as is now occuring since 2001, and several bills to rein in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were defeated. Even accepting that, if Congress had passed a meaningful tax credit for all home buyers a year ago, there would very likely be a floor under house prices right now, and the mortgage-backed securities market might still be functioning, perhaps anemically, but functioning nonetheless. Congress did not, and instead chose to allow the economy to tank, then sent out tax rebates to people who do not pay taxes so they could go out and buy necessities like overpriced sneakers and fashion-coordinated cellphones. And they want to do it again.

Congress has once again proven that government is inept. Which is why Wall Street, with the government involved like never before, can never be the same again.