Bush Professes Belief In Free Markets

"Lame duck" president George W. Bush now says that he believes strongly in free markets:

"History has shown that the greater threat to economic prosperity is not too little government involvement in the market, but too much. Our aim should not be more government, it should be smarter government..... The answer is not to try to reinvent that system. It is to fix the problems we face, make the reforms we need, and move forward with the free market system"

Oh? Too bad you didn't apply that alleged belief in free markets and opposition to government involvement to the education and prescription drug sectors, instead of expanding the governments' and reducing the market's role through the No Child Left Behind act and Medicare prescription drug benefit plan. And too bad you didn't apply that to the monetary sector by abolishing or at least reining in the Fed, instead of allowing Greenspan to create a housing bubble and now letting Bernanke use the aftermath of the bubble to expand the Fed's balance sheet.

Well, at least it sounds good, you might say. But to let Bush which is associated with the economic slump to be associated with a free market philosophy is in fact as bad for the free market philosophy's reputation as letting Greenspan be associated with it.