So in 2007 the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation — which stands behind corporate pensions — switched from bonds only to lots of stocks, buying in at, natch, the peak of the market. Oops. And this is big stuff: the Bush administration may have left us all a gratuitous loss of hundreds of billions.

Why did this happen? I’m sure we’ll find some nasty stuff, but at least part of the reason was that the Bush administration, like many conservatives, was under the spell of the following pseudo-syllogism:

1. The stock market captures the essential spirit of capitalism.

2. Capitalism roolz!

3. Therefore, stocks will go up.

The most influential disseminator of this fallacy is the Wall Street Journal, which as far as I can tell has cheered on every bubble since the 1920s, always dismissing the skeptics as fools and promoting the dumbest bull-market arguments available. I don’t have time to search for it right now, but I think there was an editorial circa 2000 saying precisely that anyone who questioned the bull market of the time was anti-capitalist.

And now the cost for that attitude is falling on you and me.