It has gone wild.
That's the deep thought, and the reason is the demise of state-sponsored communism after the Berlin Wall fell. Just cast your mind back and that is what happened. Without the counter-force of communism the capitalists had no restraints and we got what we have now: A world run as if it is a private corporation, a world run for the benefit of the capital-owners alone. A privatized world.
It is ironic that communism was what kept the American type capitalism decent. Without that public enemy the nazguls are free to rob and ravage.
I have always been a supporter of the mixed economy. They still do much better. Atrios quotes this, for example:
I asked the Swedish finance minister the other day how they made nationalised banks lend. He said to me: "It's simple. We own them, we tell them what to do and if the directors don't, we sack them and get people who can." That's what me must do.This approach, my friends, is no longer possible in the United States because those who own the markets also now own the government.
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Added later: An additional example from today:
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Friday issued a proposed rule governing hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas on public lands that will for the first time require disclosure of the chemicals used in the process.Bolding mine.
But in a significant concession to the oil industry, companies will have to reveal the composition of fluids only after they have completed drilling, not before — a sharp change from the government’s original proposal, which would have required disclosure of the chemicals 30 days before a well could be started.