Too much faith in the free market?!?!?!

What an interesting article!

"A humbled Mr. Greenspan admitted that he had put too much faith in the self-correcting power of free markets and had failed to anticipate the self-destructive power of wanton mortgage lending...On a day that brought more bad news about rising home foreclosures and slumping employment, Mr. Greenspan refused to accept blame for the crisis but acknowledged that his belief in deregulation had been shaken."

After reading this article, I felt a little more secure in my belief that "free markets" are really not that free at all. Government regulation continues to influence capitalistic actions and the results, as history has repeatedly shown, are not pretty. Mr. Greenspan is basically blaming the "free market" and saying that the FED should have stepped in sooner to prevent the housing bust.

WHATEVER! By insuring sub-prime mortgages and establishing multi-trillion dollar credit default swaps, federal policy is to blame here... not the free market.

Now, I'm certainly no proponent of free market theory, but I do say let's place blame where blame is due. In a sense, we can applaud federal policy for trying new ways to get low-income/at-risk families into homes, but the methods they chose blew up in their face. Have we seen this before??

Until federal policy wonks figure out how to become involved, without creating unintended consequences, my opinion is that no action is the best action.