By Ben Cohen

I had to do a double take when reading this from neo con lunatic William Kristol in the NY Times:

I don’t pretend to know just what has to be done. But I suspect

that free-marketers need to be less doctrinaire and less

simple-mindedly utility-maximizing, and that they should depend less on

abstract econometric models. I think they’ll have to take much more

seriously the task of thinking through what are the right rules of the

road for both the private and public sectors. They’ll have to figure

out what institutional barriers and what monetary, fiscal and legal

guardrails are needed for the accountability, transparency and responsibility that allow free markets to work.

And I don’t see why conservatives ought to defend a system that permits
securitizing mortgages (or car loans) in a way that seems to make the
lenders almost unaccountable for the risk while spreading it,
toxically, everywhere else. I don’t see why a commitment to free
markets requires permitting banks or bank-like institutions to leverage
their assets at 30 to 1. There’s nothing conservative about letting
free markets degenerate into something close to Karl Marx’s vision of
an atomizing, irresponsible and self-devouring capitalism.

Could reality actually be having an effect on the man who was wrong on just about everything he has ever said? Kristol may have a fantasy view of the outside world and an unhealthy obsession with American military power, but he seems to get that the current economic system is completely insane, and most of all, not in the slightest bit conservative.