Socialistic communism collapsed in 1987, free market capitalism collapsed years later in 2008, so what is next? Obviously neither of these ideological frameworks took notice of the most obvious human characteristics: greed and stupidity. So what's next folks?

According to the paper this morning, Bush will buy some of the Banks.

Is that free market socialism capitalism?

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"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." A.E.
Push a liberal hard enough, and he will clean out the temple.

No--that is called desperately trying to keep America from burning and btw--Bush ain't buying a thing.

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"Some men eventually stumble over the truth but they usually pick themselves up and walk on as if nothing ever happened."
-Winston Churchill

"But though there is no difference in this respect between the best demagogue and the worst, both of them having to present their cases equally in terms of melodrama, there is all the difference in the world between the statesman who is humbugging the people into allowing him to do the will of God, in whatever disguise it may come to him, and one who is humbugging them into furthering his personal ambition and the commercial interests of the plutocrats who own the newspapers and support him on reciprocal terms."
-George Bernard Shaw

Can you please explain to us how we have anything CLOSE to a free market system?

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"If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is."

-Ronald Reagan

We don't, but we have the idea that we have a free market system. It is the idea that is the problem because it gives idiots the thought that when they operate in the financial markets all will be good because free market capitalism will self correct.



"Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone." John Maynard Keynes

Soaring hyperbole?

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"Last night as I lay in bed looking at the stars I thought 'Where the hell is the ceiling ?'"
-Mad Scientist

You do know the idea of a "self correction" is that people will lose money and not be "all good" if they do stupid things.

Were does this idea that the "financial markets all will be good"? Oh yea its because the government will save the day

Given the many depressions, recessions etc, it has to be clear a legislative authority and a regulating authority are essential in the modern world. Your economics is dying, I too was taught it years ago, but the model has changed. Simplicity lead to complexity lead to corruption.

"Taken as a whole the corporate profits of the financial sector of the U.S. economy in 2004 were $300 billion, compared to $534 billion for all nonfinancial domestic industries, or about 40 percent of all domestic corporate profits. They had been less than 2 percent of total domestic corporate profits forty years earlier, a remarkable indication of the growth of financialization in the U.S. political economy."

Blame it on the baby boomers.

Monthly Review - Four Crises of the Contemporary World Capitalist System