Robyn Blumner's latest column

Robyn Blumner has a very good column this week:

If you had any doubts that our nation's financial overseers are working for those with wealth, the evidence was on full display when the Federal Reserve rode to the rescue of Wall Street. While American families facing foreclosure are told by Washington (and John McCain) to try to renegotiate terms with their mortgage holder — if they can figure out who that is — those in the private investment world who raked in wild riches by taking irresponsible risks are being bailed out of their liquidity crisis by the taxpayer.

...What I can't get out of my head is the way we've been suckered again into believing the malarkey sold by Milton Friedman, Ronald Reagan, Alan Greenspan and a long list of conservative think tanks, that the market is our savior. It is so convenient to make government the bad guy, the one who interferes with everyone's pot of gold, and make open markets the answer to what ails, as Reagan did so often. But the historical reality is that the free market has a dark side that causes social displacement and instability, and by its nature it is an uncaring thing.

...somewhere along the way, we started to buy Reagan's line that "the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: 'I'm from the government, and I'm here to help.' "

Funny, Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers didn't think those words were so scary. Reagan and his ideological partners steered us wrong. They convinced the middle class to mistrust the only friend it has that is bigger than the free market bully.