Capitalism requires the snap of firm government to maintain social order, or so I argue today:

The capitalists are now cowed or ashamed (except for a few of the more swashbuckling operators like Carl Icahn and Kirk Kerkorian) and skulk around like uncommercial nebbishes, or like altruistic avuncular sages of the Warren Buffett genre. The political class has locked arms to lay the blame for the present problems on private-sector greed, and to induce public amnesia about their own requirement that trillions of dollars of worthless real-estate debt be issued by the banking system. (Even Buffett has suggested that Congress may wish to cut its own salaries, and has stopped demanding that his taxes be increased.)
The attorney general and secretary of the Treasury seem to be trying to end the blame game by imprisoning a swath of Wall Street and tightening the leash on corporate bailout beneficiaries. In practice, as the public knows, most businessmen have no idea of the public interest, politicians are pusillanimous trimmers, and regulators are clumsy interlopers who had all the authority they needed to avoid this crisis, failed to do so, and so demand more authority to intervene.
Adam Smith was absolutely correct that there should be an efficient division of work, and that production should be aimed to please the consumer rather than to express the whim of the producer. … Smith could not have foreseen that the U.S. in particular, which was just grasping for its independence in his time, would become such a center of Babylonian decadence and philistine vulgarity as it has, in addition to having many more admirable traits.

Feedback is always welcome at: [email protected].