free market

Elliot Gerson, secretary of the Rhodes trust, points to an interesting trend: In the past thirty or so years, Rhodes Scholars have disproportionately chosen to go into Wall Street careers. He writes:

Countless voices are claiming medical care is a right. Is it?

Throughout the health care debate, Republicans and Democrats have argued over many points, such as which kinds of reforms would most effectively give all Americans access to health care and how much we should be willing to spend on such programs.

In response to the economic crisis now spilling over into the European markets, French President Nicolas Sarkozy called for an end to laissez-faire and an increase of government control over the financial markets.

In the latest of a series of new government interventions into the economy, President Bush announced a new plan to bail the financial industry out of hundreds of billions of dollars of bad assets. This follows an $85 billion bailout and effective takeover of the nation’s largest insurance company, as well as a several-hundred billion dollar bailout of the nation’s largest mortgage companies.

These actions represent a resurgence of government intervention on a scale not seen since the Great Depression.

The Wall Street Journal recently ran an excellent editorial examining the bad business and corruption that arises "when you combine private profit with government power." Created by an act of Congress in 1938, Fannie Mae is a government sponsored enterprise (GSE) that owns or guarantees nearly one half of the $12 trillion US mortgage market.