Well this certainly explains plenty...

[Doktor Howl]

Neither you, nor you parents, nor your grandparents have ever experienced a "Free Market"

Neither did THEIR parents and grandparents.

There's a reason for that, you know.

[Disco Pickle]

People just do whatever the hell they want if they have enough cash to pay for it, and someone isn't pointing a gun at their head. Thus the Free Market.

This is correct, and I blatently ignored it.  

Yes, that's what people will do when they think they can get away with it.

But they'll do it regardless of how much cash they have.

Many, many people will do it.  

Except, you know, if there was an actual free market system, this would likely have been caught by the people who stood to lose money through fraud and the people involved in the fraud would have been prosecuted.  

Um, yeah.  Because AIG just lets any old fucknozzle with a couple of shares look at the real books.

AIG is a very, very big problem.   Playing the darkside with the world economy and buying insurance against it could possibly be the worst idea we've never been able to not get to the polls to vote against.

[Doktor Howl]

AIG is a very, very big problem.   Playing the darkside with the world economy and buying insurance against it could possibly be the worst idea we've never been able to not get to the polls to vote against.

AIG isn't the problem.  The idea that corporations will be honest about their actual finances under any circumstances is the problem.

[Disco Pickle]

AIG is a very, very big problem.   Playing the darkside with the world economy and buying insurance against it could possibly be the worst idea we've never been able to not get to the polls to vote against.

AIG isn't the problem.  The idea that corporations will be honest about their actual finances under any circumstances is the problem.

The idea that ANYONE, corporations and individuals included, will be honest about money, is the problem.

at least in my estimate.

I've encountered too many people who falsify this sort of info in my life to attribute it simply to a corp. 

Shit happens at all levels whenever people think they can get away with it.

That naturally translates up the ladder to larger groups and organizations.

[Doktor Howl]

AIG is a very, very big problem.   Playing the darkside with the world economy and buying insurance against it could possibly be the worst idea we've never been able to not get to the polls to vote against.

AIG isn't the problem.  The idea that corporations will be honest about their actual finances under any circumstances is the problem.

The idea that ANYONE, corporations and individuals included, will be honest about money, is the problem.

at least in my estimate.

I've encountered too many people who falsify this sort of info in my life to attribute it simply to a corp. 

Shit happens at all levels whenever people think they can get away with it.

That naturally translates up the ladder to larger groups and organizations.

So, yeah, a free market is therefore impossible.

[Disco Pickle]

AIG is a very, very big problem.   Playing the darkside with the world economy and buying insurance against it could possibly be the worst idea we've never been able to not get to the polls to vote against.

AIG isn't the problem.  The idea that corporations will be honest about their actual finances under any circumstances is the problem.

The idea that ANYONE, corporations and individuals included, will be honest about money, is the problem.

at least in my estimate.

I've encountered too many people who falsify this sort of info in my life to attribute it simply to a corp. 

Shit happens at all levels whenever people think they can get away with it.

That naturally translates up the ladder to larger groups and organizations.

So, yeah, a free market is therefore impossible.

Wanted to ETA this but you pretty much covered it..  only posting it now for the fuck of it.


[ETA]  Corporations should be allowed to fail when incompetence and fraud is the drive behind profits.  That this doesn't happen is the largest evidence against a Free Market^TM in hundreds of years.

It happened before, sure, but never more so than in the tenure of Paulson, Bernancke and Geitner.

Too Big To Fail is the worst thing to happen to any of us.