Carlyle Creditors calls it quits - taxpayer to put the "free" in free market?

Consider it the newest economic domino
in the line of the falling -

[q
url="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=a27ldweXtg0Y&refer=news"]
March 13 (Bloomberg) -- Carlyle
Group's mortgage-bond fund, which received more than $400 million
in margin calls since March 5, said it was unable to reach an
agreement with lenders, who will ``promptly'' take over all of its
remaining assets.[/q]

And according to some it won't be the
last -

[q
url="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=a27ldweXtg0Y&refer=news"]``Carlyle
won't be the end of it,'' said Greg
Bundy, executive chairman of Sydney-based merger advisory firm
InterFinancial Ltd. and a former head of Merrill Lynch & Co.'s
Australian unit. ``There's more to come. The problem is no one can
give you an educated guess about how much.''[/q]

However,
arguably the most interesting line in the article is the last line -


[q
url="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=a27ldweXtg0Y&refer=news"]Carlyle's
fund has said its so-called agency debt has an ``implied guarantee''
from the U.S. government.[/q]

Call me an idgit, but I never
really thought that the term "free market" meant you get
taxpayer funded multi-billion dollar do-overs. I always thought it meant free to try,
free to win, free to lose. Silly me.

Should Carlyle's assumption prove
accurate the average American taxpayer is about to get stuck with
another bail out. One can only wonder how many other financial titans
sleep well at night knowing they have this "implied guarantee."