Free Market

Of all the words that send cold fear surging through your heart--terrorist, kidnapper, rapist, suicide bomber--none should cower you more than this: "free market".

As a wise man once said, "when you hear someone say 'free market', immediately duck and cover your wallet".

What Wall Street wants is a market that's free of interference and regulation when things are moving up...but no one puts their hands out faster or further then those same people suddenly called on to face the implosions resulting from their own greed and incompetence.

This may sound simplistic, but consider what the government has done with your tax dollars to prevent the markets from operating freely:

• 2001: $15b bailout of the airline industry
• 2008: $29b bailout of Bear Stearns
• 2008: estimated $200b bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

And today, sensing that the wellspring of kindness might be running dry, the auto industry is rushing to beg $50b from Washington so that their insistence on burning as much fossil fuel as possible over the last 50 years might be forgiven as a slight oversight.

Of course, you could add to all this the $576b spent to date on the Iraq War, since the main beneficiaries of that blunder are the for-profit military contractors closest to the Bush Administration. That unprovoked invasion may prove to be the largest disguised infusion ever of public funding into private pockets.

So, hold firm to your beliefs, whether a prayer for 'heavenly intervention' or a faith in 'small town values'. But if someone comes within 100 feet of you offering a friendly 'free market' smile, head for the cellar and lock up the kids.

Because our kids will be the ones ultimately called on to pay for the mass delusion of our time.