...is like blaming the outcome of the Iraq war on the people who opposed it.

Guess what? FDR's massive welfare state entitlement programs never did get repealed. In fact, the federal government has just been growing larger and larger and more powerful (granting more power to itself, of course) since FDR's administration.

There have been no free markets in America for many decades. Don't believe me? Try starting a business, or take a class in corporate accounting. If you think there's no regulations to be learned, you're simply ignorant. There have been stacks and stacks of regulations for many years. They didn't help.

Furthermore, if you're so anxious to see the Federal government control every single aspect of American life, then I don't see why this latest Wall Street mess should seem like any kind of crisis at all to you. After all, you're going to get exactly what you like: the government is now going to nationalize our entire financial sector, and grant itself (yet again) sweeping new centralized powers over Americans' economic lives.

Congratulations...welcome to yet another brave new world.

souriscriant: I'll admit that my trying to use the example of starting a small business was a spurious example. But the fact remains that even a playing field skewered towards "the big boys"--which you freely admit exists--indictaes that a free market is not at work. They are using selective regulation to eliminate competition--that is central planning, not freedom of commerce.

leslie: If you think a "die-hard conservative" wants to see any industry, let alone the financial sector, completely nationalized and under the complete control of one man's centralized authority, you must truly live in bizarro world. A real conservative (as in a Ron Paul, Bill Buckley-type of paleo-conservative) believes in the principles this country was founded on: limited government, no central economic planning, the Feds having only powers explicitly enumerated in the Constitution.

If you don't know this already, then you read too much Salon. I used to have the same problem. Try a few books on classical economics; that'll help clear your head.

...but knew that it was coming as recently as several decades ago, and have been loudly warning about it to anyone who will listen...and that turns out to be approximately nobody.

http://campaignforliberty.org

Laissez-faire would be exactly what everyone is clamoring for: stop throwing imaginary money at the problem and simply let these bloated "businesses" F-A-I-L.

People are confusing the solution with the problem.

Life is difficult sometimes. Many instances of failure are inherent in every single human story. That goes for the slow student, the widowed mother, the second-place Olympian, and the aspiring businessman.

Somehow, it has become the government's job to stop people from failing--at anything.

That's all well and good, but don't confuse the solution with the problem. The problem is not lack of interference from government's "helping hand." People should be allowed to fail on their own. Big companies, individuals....humans. Failing is how we learn.

That's free-market philosophy, and it is intrinsically linked with the American conception of liberty.

We haven't seen it around this land for many decades...so don't point the finger at freedom.

http://campaignforliberty.org

Talk of a Clinton "dynasty" is a strawman argument. Hillary is only related to Bill by marriage, and even that has been touch and go on occasion.

Wrong. A dynasty is successive rule by members of the same family.

The fact that you portray a thirty-three year marriage--with a child--as only a casual acquaintance speaks volumes about the mainstream liberal mindset.

Indeed, much of the opprobrium visited on the Clintons during Bill's presidency was because they were both complete outsiders.

You mean like the opprobrium that the Clinton's themselves heaped on anyone who dared to challenge Queen Hillary's Inherited White House entitlement?

McCain knows nothing about economics, just the same as Salon's economics columnist and just the same as most Americans.

Witness the surreal spectacle of liberal ideologues--many of whom openly admit to knowing nothing about economics--chasing their tails to blame this on "free markets," while at the same time reflexively crying for a real free market solution, i.e. no bail-out, and let the companies fail.

A 30% income tax rate alone is enough to make a mockery of the idea that "free markets" exist in America. The government forcibly takes a third of a person's income and we are supposed to believe that "too much freedom" is the problem?

Interesting how an increasingly totalitarian government has created a situation where people are essentially crying for the abolition of private wealth.

Because as soon as private business-owners are properly eliminated from society, and government literally controls every single facet of our lives-social and economic--everything should improve real quick, right? Riiiight.

http://campaignforliberty.org

...get your raw nerves touched much?

Heh.

...with predatory lending. My wife worked in the hispanic department at HSBC and witnessed this practice first-hand, before she left in disgust two years ago.