Yah, well, what’s NOT crony capitalism about being too big to fail? Conservatives had better start realizing that monopolism is NOT capitalism, it is state corporatism or fascism. We let the commie yahoos co-opt us in their Wall Street sit down demonstration while they get millions of Americans are going “hell yes”, stick it to those Wall Stree b*stards. Capitalism’s tendency to evolve into monopolism has got to be regulated. We should be fighting to reinstall the Glass-Steagall legislation and repeal the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act which effectively gave commercial banks the green light to invest in crap loan derivatives and other “creative” instruments. “Too big to fail” is fascism. Solyndra is chump change. Our target acquisition sucks.
Learn it or live it department: These issues were thrashed out 120 years ago and more in a German theoretical periodical called Ordo ("Order"). The magazine was the home of reform champions who argued that fair markets require good policemen who pinch anyone trying to put a thumb in the scales -- the people Adam Smith complained about, hatching their price-fixing conspiracies in the back booths of public houses in 18th-century London.
"Ordoliberals" rebuke classical liberals (laissez-faire liberals), who are 100% marketarian in their reliance on the market to correct prices and frustrate cartels. The marketarians do have some successes to point to: the London tin cartel of 30 years ago, which grew up on the example of OPEC, fell apart with rueful losses to the instigators. OPEC itself hasn't done all that well, although in their case they also had a counter-cartel, the OECD, to contend with.
The "ordoliberals" have common sense on their side: Good fences make good neighbors, and good policemen make good markets.
It’s not capitalism or free markets that evolve into monopolies, it is the government promotion of favored companies (corporatism, fascism or so called crony capitalism) and the over-regulation of small start-ups that seek to compete in the open market. The government’s role is to be the umpire, ensuring that companies follow the rule of law and as an arbitrator to settle disputes.