I have to say that I am somewhat with Krugman on this one, for totally different reasons, of course. I agree with him that the president is clueless. The president calling what’s happening in Wall Street free-market or capitalist couldn’t be farther from the truth. What we have now is not a free market. Rather, it is an ugly instance of crony capitalism: The terrible marriage of the government and ”too big to fail or to pay for their mistakes” businesses at the expenses of taxpayers.

Does it mean that the government should keep intervening in these businesses and deciding how executives should be paid or rewarded? No. But, please, I wish the president would stop thinking that what we have here is capitalism or the free-market.

For the most eloquent explanation of the devastating consequences of crony capitalism, watch George Mason University’s Russ Roberts’s testimony in front of a congressional committee on executive compensation.