Exactly...we hear "free market economy" "advantage in efficient resource allocation" talk when Wall Street demanded deregulation, and that Glass-Steagall be rep

Exactly...we hear "free market economy" "advantage in efficient resource allocation" talk when Wall Street demanded deregulation, and that Glass-Steagall be repealed. Then when the rentiers start going broke it becomes "too big to fail" and President Bush signing TARP into law. The same thing happened in the 1980s - Reagan deregulated the banks, rentiers made money, then the S&Ls went bankrupt and the taxpayer was on the hook for the bill. Then we have the 1979 government bailout of Chrysler...the 2009 government bailout of Chrysler...this company seems to need a bailout every thirty years...with some of the same talking heads shouting how the banks need to be bailed out denouncing the "socialism" of bailing out Chrysler. Of course there was the 1971 government bailout of Lockheed as well. Every year the US government sends $500 million to Iowa in direct farm subsidies...Senators Jodi Ernst and Chuck Grassley are against "socialist" measures that tend to go more to big cities in other states, but of course hypocritically demand the government give corporate welfare to the farmers in their state. Texas gets $400 million a year in direct farm subsidies, with the same hypocrisy surrounding it. At least Democrats are honest about what they're doing. Then of course we have the net neutrality debates, with the backers of the AT&T/Verizon monopolists saying "get the government hands off the Internet". This is a laugh to people like me (and some others here I'm sure), who remember the days of ARPAnet and NSFnet and sri-nic.arpa and nic.ddn.mil and so forth. Some people act like Red Guard students are still marching through Peking, throwing portraits of the Buddha in bonfires during a Smash the Four Olds campaign. In the modern day, the economy of the PRC does not operate all that differently than that of the US or Germany or some other country in terms of a "free market". The only different for the PRC is its economy has been booming since the 1980s much more than these other economies. Since 1990, every year the PRC's economy has grown 7% or more. That this might slow down for this quarter is what is eliciting surprise. Looking at the US economic downturns after 2000, and after 2008, it seems incredible that so many American pundits point to a slow quarter in the PRC's growth as signs of how they've been heading in the wrong direction all along etc. 7-14% economic growth every year since 1990 looks pretty good to me.