Matt Bors for October 18, 2011

Narrow — you mean, progressives like John McCain and George Bush, BEGGING congress to pass the bailouts now, now, now?? It was progressives who tried (and were blocked) from putting some rational limits and a small tax on risky transactions to pay for the bailouts and reduce the damage these financial games do to the economy while siphoning off money. As for high finance being a free market… that’s the best joke I’ve heard all day! You apparently weren’t born yet, but I remember 2008 and the near collapse of perfectly good businesses when the credit market froze up after Lehmann Brothers failed. Free markets lead to monopolies, and monopolies do not fall without destroying a lot of good businesses. The financial collapse was due to a LACK of regulation, allowing banks to dabble in high-risk games with taxpayer money. Bring back the Volcker rule.

Kudos, ARod! You. too, grainbelt and masterskrain. Wassamatter, jmatt? Still avoiding issues by calling names?

Narrow- Ayn Rand is dead, and even Greenspan, her best bud, admits her view is septic, get over it.

Capitalism failed because it wasn’t “pure”, chistianity fell into Inquisition because it was not “pure”, Islam falls into integrism because it is not “pure”…

Same old, same old…

If by pure capitalism you mean “without any rules whatsoever”, nobody will be fool enough use that. Capitalism is a theory, not a religious doctrine and shouldn’t be followed like that.

Use your minds and tell me if two people ever lives in the same place without any rules? Kids don’t want rules, but adults know that they are necessary.

Yohan- yes, education has gotten expensive. That must be why you didn’t “waste” any money on it?

If the banks had not been bailed out, the official unemployment rate in the U.S. would be 35%. Stocks would trade at pennies on the dollar. All the money in savings accounts, checking accounts, and certificates of deposit would have been lost. Corporate bonds would also have been worthless, since most businesses would be bankrupt. You can’t prove something that never happened. But if the banks had not been bailed out, all the money in the economy would have vanished by Spring 2009. People forget so quickly how desperate matters were in Fall 2008. Federal Reserve liquidity prevented an economic apocalypse.