I never expected to find apologist for thieves on FR.
Those “thieves” are to theft as Conservatives are to terrorism; it’s so because the government Leviathan chooses to call them so.
To paraphrase Andy Warhol, in the Age of Obama, everyone will be a criminal for fifteen minutes.
“I never expected to find apologist for thieves on FR.”
One of the more laughable aspects of what sometimes passes for ‘conservatism’ around here is the belief that morality can determined simply by whether or not someone is a businessman versus a government employee.
Evidently some kind of Ayn Randian nature god sorts everyone out into the proper slots, with the pure at heart all being in the private sector and the wicked working for government. Ergo anything the private sector does is by definition Not Theft. And if it is theft, it must be the government’s fault.
You would think that some of these geniuses would have heard of Charles Ponzi and Bernie Madoff, among others.
I now do.
It’s because Republicans and conservatives, on balance, don’t know jack about financial markets, how they really work and what is going on.
If you asked 100 Republicans or conservatives to explain what happened at MF Global and who it affected, I’ll wager that 99 of these people would look at you with blank expressions... but in the next breath, they’d start babbling something about ‘free markets’...