Yeah its the result of free markets not be allowed to fix themselves.
If you think the unemployment rate is bad now, you'd go darkside at the rate if TARP hadn't happened. They were only talking about the collapse of the world financial systems....I would venture to say that unemployment would have been the least of the US's problems...
People are alot more resilliant then you give us credit for.
The free market is based on natural law. When people are violating natural law, you are going to see the market correct itself. If you stop that correction, it only gets worse down the road.
And thats why we don't have a 'free market'. We have a managed market and have had one for a very long time. Free markets feature depressions as a regular/semi regular event. We decided a long time ago to manage the economy to try and prevent it's most violent swings.