By no measure am I an expert on economics; in fact I am a rank neophyte with occasional interest. But I’d also say that the “experts” are also no experts themselves, Alan Greenspan included. End disclaimers.

I continue to find it hard to parse the different solutions folks have put forward. Some claim this is a clear defeat for our system as it has been for the past, oh, thirty-odd years, and call it “free-market capitalism.” The solution for them is more regulation. Others see this as a failure of government to truly free the markets — making one wonder whether we’ve been living under free-market capitalism — and their solution tends to revolve around monetary policy, restoration of commodity-based currency, and less government intervention.

Whatever you do call it, I struggle to reconcile how one can call our economic system free-market capitalism when indeed government tinkering and tweaking has prevented it from being “free,” such as the Federal Reserve, the CRA, FDIC, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Sarbanes-Oxley, and the list goes on and on.

I don’t pretend to know which course of action is the best, and it does seem to me that some amount of government regulation is required to keep markets free and more or less fair, e.g., in penalizing fraud, preventing monopolies, etc.

I remain skeptical of grand claims about the ultimate failure or success of free-market capitalism because I’m not yet convinced we’ve seen free-market capitalism in action, for better or for worse.