"In one respect the system has remained completely consistent throughout. It blames all problems on external influences beyond its control and takes credit for any and all favorable occurrences. It thereby continues to promote the myth that the private economy is unstable, while its behavior continues to document the reality that government is today the major source of economic instability."
--Milton and Rose Friedman, Free To Choose, 1980

There was no 'economic instability'. After eight years of unbridled free market, the economy was headed straight for the toilet. Nothing unstable about it. Capitalism operates, almost by definition, on the basis of what is expedient.

Hmmmm, even with drunken sailor spending by GW, unemployment was between 4 and 5 percent, the dow hovered at around 14 thousand, gas was around $2.00 a gallon and we were still in control of our economy and our standing in the world.

But, since the time it was clear Obama the centrist Marxist America hating radical would be taking the reigns, it's all been in the toilet and his hand is on the flusher.

What the idolaters of that abstraction known as the "free market" on the right don't seem to understand is the extent to which capitalism and socialism are cut from the same cloth. Capitalism for its own sake has led to quite a bit of instability in its own right in this country. It's the dislocations and instability caused by capitalism and rampant industrialization that have led to the growth in the size and intrusiveness of goverment.

We need to start thinking of our economic system in terms other than this either/or proposition between capitalism and socialism. Both systems are bankrupt in their own ways. The sooner that so called "conservatives" recognize this and stop carrying water for the GOP the better. Capitalism has arguably done more than socialism to undermine the things that conservatives should be most concerned with conserving--family, community, local and decentralized governance, traditional morality, rootedness and a sense of place. These are the real sources of stability, econominic and otherwise--not some narrow conception of economic "growth" for its own sake.

"...the aggregation of vast properties under anonymous ownership is a constant invitation to further state direction of our lives and fortunes. For, when properties are vast and integrated, on a scale now frequently seen, it requires but a slight step to transfer them to state control. Indeed, it is a commonplace that the trend toward monopoly is a trend toward state ownership; and, if we continued the inalysis further, we should discover that business develops a bureaucracy which can be quite easily merged with that of government. Large business organizations, moreover, have seldom been backward about petitioning government for assistance, since their claim to independence rests upon desire for profit rather than upon principle or the sense of honor. Big business and the rationalization of industry thus abets the evils we seek to overcome."

-Richard Weaver as quoted in "Beyond Capitalism and Socialism"

"Capitalism has arguably done more than socialism to undermine the things that conservatives should be most concerned with conserving--family, community, local and decentralized governance, traditional morality, rootedness and a sense of place. These are the real sources of stability, econominic and otherwise--not some narrow conception of economic "growth" for its own sake."

This is a fantastic quote, but it assumes postmodern mainstream conservatives care about community and traditional morality, which their standard-bearers clearly do not (Rush Limbaugh, Mark Sanford, Ted Haggard, etc.) The either/or logical fallacy in the worth-repeating quote was summed up very nicely earlier in the comment. The problem doesn't lie in a conflict between government and the "free market", but in an unholy alliance between the two that has led to stagnating wages for the vast majority of wage-earners since 1979, a decimated manufacturing base coupled with a bloated, parasitic, and unproductive financial sector, and wealth, through government imposition, being funneled from the vast majority of workers to narrow sectors at the top of the socioeconomic ladder.

The sad thing is that conservatives get their panties in a bunch over small specks like meals for poor kids at school[think cynthia davis(the right to food is a universal human right, btw)], but don't blink an eyelid at the sequoia trunk that is government subsidized corporate protectionism and direct taxpayer-funded payouts and bailouts to massive financial firms, the genesis of which was engineered by the Bush/Paulson economic regime.

"China saves, invests and grows at 8 percent. America, awash in debt, has a shrinking economy, a huge trade deficit, a gutted industrial base, an unemployment rate surging toward 10 percent and a money supply that's swollen to double its size in a year. The 20th century may have been the American Century. The 21st shows another pattern"