In Rolling Stone's new interview with Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), she embraces the notion of "collateral benefit" for major financial corporations that are benefiting from the $700 billion TARP bailout.

The "collateral benefit" idea was first elucidated by Barney Frank (D-MA), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. As Frank explained it to PBS last month, the inextricable intertwining of ordinary Americans' livelihood with Wall Street's livelihood makes it impossible not to help big banks while saving the U.S. economy:

[Y]ou can't help the whole system without some incidental benefits to people that want help. It is the reverse of something terrible that we have learned to live with, collateral damage. That's in a war. ... We have the reverse of this. We have something called collateral benefit. That is, you want to get the credit system functioning again, but you can't create a whole new one from scratch. You have to work with what you have got. So one effect of helping the credit system is you are going to provide some collateral benefit, literally to people you would rather yell at.

Frank's "collateral benefit" theory makes no attempt to get at why more and more Americans have entrusted their financial future to the market over the past two decades, thereby making it impossible to save the economy without keeping Wall Street afloat.

But conservatives know the source of this cultural shift -- themselves. Right-wing strategists have long attempted to solidify a long-term Republican majority through promoting stock ownership. Listen to conservative godfather Grover Norquist, telling Frontline in 2005:

The left understands that America is drifting away from where they want to be. ... It's the last 25 years. 1980, only 20 percent of Americans owned stock. Today over 60 percent of Americans do through 401(k)s and IRAs. And those people have been drifting toward the Republicans and the conservatives ... ever since.

Ken Mehlman, the former Republican party chairman, told Frontline that year that the GOP wanted to broaden its appeal to minorities by encouraging stock purchases:

The tax relief, which says to an increasing majority of Americans: Own stock and investments, we're not going to double-tax you on that; that's wrong.

Now, it's debatable whether investing in the market is more likely to make you a Republican, as Slate memorably observed five years ago. But when Frank and Pelosi talk about the bailout offering "collateral benefit" to major banks while primarily helping the everyday taxpayer, remember the dogged GOP campaign to make us a nation of stock-owners. It played a crucial role in ensuring that TARP looks the way it does and was implemented the way it was.

Ah, one more thing: Here's what Pelosi told Rolling Stone, when its interviewer asked about populist anger at bailed-out banks.

Your question is best answered by quoting Barney Frank. He says, 'We talk a lot about collateral damage, but sometimes there's collateral benefit, whereby doing the right thing for the American people and the economy enables some people to benefit who we don't want to benefit.