Picture this: You've just located your dream house. Secure a loan, and the keys are yours. So Monday morning you suit up in your most responsible pinstripes, gather up your financial records, and head down to the S&L. There, a loan officer studies your credit report and bank statements, furrows his brow, and after a hushed consultation with his colleagues, delivers a decision. Based on your financial state, you'll never make the mortgage. Dejected, you begin to gather up your paperwork and contemplate life as an eternal renter. But then the bank president emerges from his paneled office and asks if you've got just a moment more. He has a problem. Unlike you, his bank is a very rich institution, a situation that he doesn't find all together just. Perhaps you could balance things a bit by just taking the money you need. No mortgage, no repayment necessary. Consider it a gift, he smiles as he begins counting out cash…

A similar scene took place yesterday at the World Bank. Since poor countries can't repay the $15 billion the institution loans each year, President Bush proposed a solution. He calls it "compassionate conservatism on an international level."" Here's how it works: rather than cutting off credit until the $2.6 trillion owed the bank is repaid or saddling bankrupt regimes with more debt, the World Bank could make grants rather than loans. That way, if the Bank doesn't expect a return, it won't be disappointed by defaults, and debtor nations won't incur more liability. "Let's call it what it is," Mary Ellen Countryman, White House assistant press secretary for foreign affairs said. "A lot of the loans aren't getting paid back anyway." Wonder why no one came up with this economic masterstroke sooner?

But wait, there's more. For the socialists in the crowd, an added bonus. Debt-free borrowing and global wealth redistribution all in one nifty package. "A world where some live in comfort and plenty, while half of the human race lives on less than $2 a day, is neither just nor stable," the President said. Apparently the $803 million the U.S. shovels into the World Bank's vaults each year isn't sufficient because we're still far too prosperous. Since the bank has no money of its own, and compassion now means compulsory generosity, American funding will have to increase. Any who balk can expect that line familiar to recalcitrant vegetable-eaters, "Think of the starving children in Africa."

No doubt the President's intentions are noble, but his prescription is no cure. Cut back to the benevolent S&L. No bank can do business this way - not even the World Bank. But then, the World Bank doesn't play by the usual rules. For years, it has pumped untold billions into corrupt regimes that trickle back just enough to keep the payments coming. The gullible G-8, eager to make amends for their affluence, continued to dump dollars down the rat hole, knowing the scheme but sustaining the farce lest default speed global depression.

Mr. Bush does not recognize the racket, else he wouldn't buttress a system designed to swindle his nation's wealth. Who paid the lion's share of the Bank's bad loans? Who rushed infusions of cash to save the heads of crony capitalists? Who beat back creditors by floating deadbeat debtors? We did. Proof positive that America does not lack generosity. We lack judgment. And this wooly brainstorm by our chief executive suggests it's still running in short supply.