the tindog coffeehouse

President Bush (and yes, he’s still the president for two more months!) has come to the defense of free-market capitalism, rejecting calls from other nations for extreme regulation of financial markets:

“Government intervention is not a cure-all,” Bush was to say in New York, according to prepared remarks released in advance by the White House. …

“The crisis was not a failure of the free market system,” Bush said. “And the answer is not to try to reinvent that system.” …

“History has shown that the greater threat to economic prosperity is not too little government involvement in the market but too much,” Bush said. “It would a terrible mistake to allow a few months of crisis to undermine 60 years of success.”

I couldn’t agree more. In fact, I made a similar point, although not as explicitly, a few weeks ago:

Yes, tighter regulation of U.S. financial markets is necessary, especially in the short term. But the government is not the best decider of supply and demand; just ask the Soviet Union. So in that regard, we need to give the market plenty of room to sort itself out.