Such is the title of the latest BusinessWeek.com debate. Taking the “con” side is CEI’s own Eli Lehrer, who argues (in part):

Long-term government bank ownership, in any case, would simply make the country poorer. Banks actually create money when they lend it out, but doing so only has positive overall economic consequences when the loans get repaid. Government-owned banks would face enormous, understandable pressure to lend to politically powerful groups and industries that can’t reasonably repay their loans. Even the…

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Did the free market cause the financial crisis?  Was it unbridled capitalism?

The Competitive Enterprise Institute and the National Taxpayers Union don’t believe for a minute that capitalism caused the financial crisis.  How can we be so confident?  Because capitalism doesn’t exist in the United States, especially in the financial sector.

Nearly every industry in the U.S. finds itself making regular pilgrimages to Washington to seek special favors—subsidies for this or that, regulations that harm competitors or smaller firms, or trade deals that benefit…

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