Free market economists trembled this morning as the Los Angeles Times, one of AmeriKKKa's leading underground newspapers made the startling announcement that free markets have failed the American people and that they were looking for alternatives!

(http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-losingfaith16-
2008jul16,0,1516735.story)

"Spurred by the continued housing crisis, turmoil in financial markets, spiking oil prices, disappearing jobs and shrinking retirement savings, the nation and its political leaders have begun to sour on the notion that the current market system is the key to a fair, stable and efficient society."

Gee, Peter Gosseln, the writer of the article left out one of the most egregious failing industries in our nation today--dead tree newspapers. The free market has certainly settled their hash for them. There are massive staff cuts at The Times. Whole sections are being cut and a third of the writing and editorial staff is being let go. There are similar massacres occurring at almost every 'dead tree' newspaper as circulations drop and advertisers migrate to the internet and cable TV. The newspapers and the similarly failing 'major' network newscasts look on in dismay as New Media conservative types like Rush Limbaugh land nine-figure contracts.
But with that obvious bias against the free market aside, look at the above excerpt. Everything that the writer talks about is a direct result of excessive government intervention in free markets. Two massive 'government chartered' corporations, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, greatly loosened the criteria for qualifying for a mortgage a few years ago to give 'the poor and disadvantaged' (AKA minorities and people with bad credit) the opportunity to 'share the American dream'. This empowered a cloud of noisome real estate 'flippers', fly-by-night developers, and oily loan sharks to descend on the benighted poor and encourage them to sign on the dotted line and enter real estate nirvana. Meanwhile the Middle Class went on an orgy of home purchases or massive expansions of their old houses based on equity created by trillions of dollars of phony government-backed paper surging into the financial markets through the two bogus government 'independent guarantors'. But like all speculative surges this one reached a point where it became unsustainable and now the ebb-tide is pulling formerly strong financial institutions into the vortex along with the overinflated retirement dreams of the 401k worshipers who are sitting on the balconies of their 3,000 square foot McMansions cursing that damned free market for going down as well as up. The government is stepping in with trillions of dollars in further 'guarantees'; of course with a truckload of new rules and regulations attached. We're seeing the beginning of what might be the effective nationalization of the financial sector. Some free market.
Another bone in the throat of the Muddle Class is the steep rise in energy prices. They sold their 1,200 square foot houses near the city and moved twenty or thirty miles away to a 3,000 square foot McMansion in the satellite suburbs where the schools hadn't been totally destroyed by federal intervention, radical 'educational reform' zealots and rampaging minorities using their victim status to evade any discipline. Taxes were lower and you could jump in the air-conditioned Navigator, get breakfast at the drive-thru window and gab on the cell phone as you cruised slowly in the gridlock stream to your job downtown. Of course you voted for the local Democrat who could be counted on to rein in those filthy polluting oil companies and prevent them from annoying any endangered species with their horrible drilling rigs, pipelines and refineries. These Tribunes Of The People also could be counted on to keep any nuclear power plants from being built within a thousand miles of your house and to demand the closing of coal-fired electrical generators. In foreign policy 'No Blood For Oil' became the watchword. But 'No Blood For Oil' means...no oil. Not expanding production while demand rises all over the world can only lead to one result. We're seeing it now. The LA Times article makes the absurd claim that energy demand has only risen 1% but doesnt give a time-frame for that figure or site a source. Another vague number tossed out by liberals to make their point; $140 a barrel oil has probably suppressed any recent growth in demand but long term overall demand is way up and the trend hasnt stopped. Cringing weak policies in the Gulf have allowed the Iranians to create periodic scares which threaten to close the Straits Of Hormuz and keep the markets in a constant state of price-inflating panic. Yet even now the Democrats resist allowing drilling off the continental shelf and in ANWR. When President Bush lifted the executive order against new drilling (its about time this weak-kneed liberal took some kind of action) the price of a barrel of oil dipped $9 in one day...until it became clear that the Pelosi-Reid leftist enviro-zealots had no intention of following that executive action with legislative action. The Democrats are directly responsible for energy prices because of their environmental fanaticism that blocks any serious energy development at any cost to the stupid electorate who are convinced that these are the Bush policies.
The leftists will do the same to Health Care; introduce some unworkable 'free market reforms' to make everything 'fair' and then when the whole structure collapses under the weight of the unworkable new rules they'll go for nationalization to 'fix' the free market.
This country was made great and wealthy by the Free Market. There has been more freedom of opportunity for anyone willing to exert themselves then there ever has been ever in human history. We are now actively abandoning the underlying premises that created that greatness; this election should confirm in power a radical socialist party and place a totally incompetent dilettante who has spent his life being steeped in radical anti-market theories into power in the White House. The result will be a hyper-inflation that will equal that of any third-world thugocracy, which is what we will become.