Free Markets or Regulation

Am I naive, ignorant, or stupid?

Or is it possible that I am right and the masses are stampeding like buffalo toward an unseen cliff where they will meet their financial doom?

Let me be clear - I think you are nuts if you believe that we are seeing a demonstration of the failures of the free market. What free market? We haven't had a free market since before the American Civil War. Some special interest or lobby has been steadily influencing those with power to regulate literally every facet of our lives since that time.

A truly free market system is chaotic and messy, but tends to find an equilibrium between stability and chaos. Let's say you start a top spinning on a table - it wobbles and rotates gracefully but chaotically, until you reach in and bump it. Then it wobbles erratically, maybe corrects itself, or maybe falls down. If you bump it again and again, it definitely falls down. The same is true of a system like an economy. (I admit, my analogy doesn't account for the top finally spinning down and falling over, but it is simply an analogy - let's pretend the top doesn't lose energy and continues spinning infinitely.)

Here's an article that gives additional insight into my thinking:
http://www.fee.org/in_brief/default.asp?id=2444

So let's wake up! Some new flavor of intervention or regulation cannot possibly fix the problems we are currently experiencing. We need to remember that freedom means just that - FREEDOM! Not just freedom of speech or religion, but freedom of the markets. Freedom to buy and sell without intervention. Freedom to truly own private property and do what you want with it. Freedom to protect your life and property against plunder. FREEDOM!