Who's your daddy?

The boys on Wall Street are slobbering over the tantalizing piece of meat being offered by our administration, most of whom were amazingly hard-core free marketeers until the failure of that "philosophy" bit them hard in the ass. So after yesterday's historic selloff of nearly 800 points -- brought on by the traders realizing they weren't going to get that hunk of free money just yet -- they regained their confidence that good old government would come to their rescue and rode the bull up nearly 500 points.

After watching this bullshit, is there anyone out there who still believes the market has anything to do with real value?

Are the corrupt companies that ran riot over regulations worth any more today than yesterday?

I suppose the answer comes from how you look at things. If you expect Big Daddy to show up and supply the ransom money to get your sorry ass out of hock, then sure, the company's worth more for the main reason that it's still around. The free market simply isn't free, my friends. It's a myth. A joke. An ideological construct. Lack of regulation doesn't lead to greater good, though it may lead temporarily to greater profits -- lack of regulation leads inevitably to thievery and negligence.

In sports, if you are corrupt and violate basic principles -- such as betting on your own team -- you are banned for life. In some sports (although not the big money makers) if you are caught cheating, you are banned for considerable periods, if not life. If you are a casino operator and you are caught chumming it up with the mob, you are banned from casinos.

I would humbly suggest that the bailout package be reworked to include a ban on top-level executives ever working again in the industry. CEOs of these companies, whose quasicriminal behavior led to this meltdown, banned for life. Boards of Directors, whose rank negligence could cost this country trillions of dollars and our position in the world economy, banned for life.

And please, please, please, could we perhaps have the common sense as American voters to dump the American Enterprise Institute, Cato Institute, Neocon free marketeer ideology out on its ass for the forseeable future?