Don't blame the market...it's oversight

In the end, my feeling is that market forces & capitalism didn’t fail us at all. Like Adam Smith recognized (and is conveniently overlooked by market fundamentalists, especially the chicago school of thought that so many republicans and clinton seem to adulate), the invisible hand needs close supervision. The markets did what they do best: create the best & fastest path to riches given the legislation and took advantage of the outdated regulatory system. 

I can’t blame the unethical & purposely deceitful workarounds wall street perpetrated in the name of short term self-enrichment at the expense of society. That’s what they will always do & we should expect it. Anything else is just naïve (like saying they will self-regulate: HA!). It’s governments responsibility to lay down intelligent (and admittedly imperfect but better than the alternative) rules to account for the greed & to make sure that the negative externalities are taken into account. Same thing goes for pollution, alternative energy, etc. 

An example of this is: several years ago, we should have had government state that by 2011 it will have 50% hybrids in its fleet. That would have encouraged manufacturers to develop hybrids since they know there is a guaranteed market. How they get there is up to the market, which is what it does so well. Another example: instead of the dumb-ass tax rebate we just had (which did near nothing), direct the tax breaks to education or some goal we want to achieve. The tax rebate simply went to TVs, electronics, etc: in other words usually a foreign made product that only produces at best a short term lift. Education is local & would pay back many times over by investing in our people. Market: how. Government: what.

What is clear to me (and has always been) that markets left to their own devices with little oversight will create monopolistic “winner takes all” systems that squeeze others & enrich the owners. These systems may be efficient but tend to be good for the owners many times at the expense of society/consumers.