How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities

"After more than a year, the U.S. government had explicitly taken responsibility for resolving the banking crisis.  The talk of leaving it to the market, of relying on the economy's recuperative properties, of finding a private-sector solution--this had all been jettisoned. Having allowed global capitalism to move to the cliff's edge, terrifying their electors, the politicians finally had pledged to do whatever necessary to prevent it from toppling over.  This alone was enough to restore a semblance of order." 329

When historians come to write about the "Greenspan Bubbles," they will do so with good cause: more than any other individual, the former Fed chairman was responsible for letting the hogs run wild"! 336

"Although some conservatives are still blaming everything on Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, or the Bush-Clinton vision of an "Ownership Society," this anti-government posturing is hard to take seriously. As happened in the 1930's, the unfettered free market has disgraced itself in full public view"338

"Between the collapse of communism and the outbreak of the subprime crisis, and understandable and justified respect for market forces mutated into a rigid and unquestioning devotion to a particular, and blatantly unrealistic, adaptation of Adam Smith's invisible hand." 337