The Myth of the Free Market

[marmar]

Published on Monday, August 16, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
The Myth of the Free Market

by Craig Barnes


Millions of Americans are today unemployed because the free market is not working for them. Millions of Americans have lost their homes because the free market did not work for them or for the banks. Before the health care bill passed last January millions could not get health care because the free market worked for them when they were healthy but often did not work at all when they needed care.

The free market sent jobs to China and Mexico, India and Taiwan. The free market encouraged subprime mortgages and collateralized debt obligations that were collages of numbers that the market itself did not understand. The free market encouraged insurance companies to compete for ways not to pay for health care rather than to encourage ways to provide health care.

During the years of the Bush administration's free market advocacy, Bear Stearns collapsed, Merrill Lynch failed, and Lehman Brothers collapsed. The free market enabled Goldman Sachs to act as if it believed in securities that it sold to others while at the same time betting with its own money that these securities would fail. To knowingly induce buyers with misinformation is intentional fraud, but the free market did not and has not ever protected against intentional fraud.

In a free market, British Petroleum risked environmental catastrophe in order to save money on expensive cement or time-consuming testing and used cheaper designs rather than safer ones for the most complex drilling apparatus in the world. Transocean obeyed the demands of the market by not fixing 390 maintenance items that were back-listed, ignored a leak in the control pod of the blowout preventer, and avoided the delay caused by its gas detection alarms by simply shutting them off. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/08/16-2

[Xipe Totec]

1. It's the free hand up the market working its magic. nt