I guess I’ll leave economics based posting to others until I actually know a bit more about what I’m talking about, and don’t just think I do

Free trade is what you describe. Capitalism is where the means of production are in private hands.

Furthermore, the current economic crisis may only invalidate the sort of hypercapitalistic dismantling of the buffers between national economies that existed earlier in the century, as well as the idea of selling things that don’t exist.

The problem is, in a truly “free” market, as understood by Anglo-Saxon variants of capitalism, then there are no rules against selling derivatives or sub-prime mortgages. And sure, you could claim that in a situation where the government did not intervene, businesses and banks would be more cautious…but I fucking doubt it.

Recessions don’t “weed out the weak”. They’re not evolution. They weed out businesses reliant on loans for expansion…and there are some very large and robust business which nonetheless require loans for various purposes, especially if their sales are seasonal or otherwise constricted, yet bring in big money.

Also those two lines sound far too close to “capitalism didn’t fail us…we failed IT” to my liking.

But then again, I’m not arguing to replace the system, so I suspect most criticisms have nothing to do with me anyway. I’m up for tweaking it, putting more economic powers in the hands of the individuals…but at the end of the day, most economic arguments made by non-economists are complete wank.