Free Republic

You wouldn't know it from all the panicky headlines but the current turmoil on Wall Street is not the world's first financial crisis. Latin America has suffered more than a few, and many were on a larger scale relative to the economies they hit. One was triggered by Chile's 1982 economic collapse. For a small country it was a lot worse than what is happening in the U.S. today. The Bush economic team could learn from how it was handled. The Chilean plan helped the banks recapitalize and protected depositors. It also minimized moral hazard and kept the government's role...

Long hailed by free market economists as the model for how to create a pension system, news out of Chile that it plans on making payouts to low income seniors, has government interventionists jumping for joy. The AP writes: The new $2 billion-a-year program will expand public pensions to groups left out by private pensions - the poor and self-employed, housewives, street vendors and farmers who saved little for retirement - granting about a quarter of the nation's work force public pensions by 2012. The fact is that this move is the way that governments should generally function. Stay out...