Although I don't believe the markets should go unregulated I don't think you can call what we had for the last two decades laissez-faire.

Wrong choice of words, I agree. I should have said deregulation.

The banks were required by law to give out mortgages to people they new could not qualify and then they dumped them on Fannie and Freddie who were eventually taken over by the government. Profits were kept losses were socialized. That is not laissez-faire; it is not even capitalism.

True, but Fannie and Freddie weren't the only recipients. Securitization, which had no regulatory oversight, dumped MBS's far and wide including state pension funds, municipal funds and so forth - all with the blessing of the rating agencies. Then there's MERS which was set up to bypass local registry tax and resulted in clouded titles, fraudulent conveyance etc, all of which was white-washed by special foreclosure courts who purposely ignored lack of standing and fraudulent robo-signed documents.

If you take the strict meaning of laissez-faire (let it be) then the word certainly applies to the above. No one went to jail for any of this, even though clear evidence of fraud exists.

I'm sure Casey's response would be that none of it would have happened if the Fed wasn't pushing interest rates to the floor, but that's a bit disingenuous. No one forced the banks and other lenders to write jumbo mortgages, Alt-A's, liars loans and cash-out refi's on same. That was all done at their own initiative, driven by Wall Street's demand for Toxic Waste, as they called it as early as 2003. Again, no one went to jail - a few fines here and there perhaps - just the cost of doing business.

Let's call it Laissez-faire for the rich then, the class of which Casey is a member. I don't see him stepping up to defend the many innocent victims who lost their life savings because of all this. Karl Denninger (as kooky as he is) does more on this front than any of Casey's tribe of free marketeers. Casey's answer is the coward's way out - run and hide in Argentina. Quite the patriot no? But wait, this is the "International Man" were talking about - the Man of Many Passports. If things go bad in Oz, just pick up and move to Wonderland. If you can afford it, that is. Ah, but how many of his subscribers can?

Of course with all his talk of entrepreneurs and technology surely he's funding some of that with his enormous wealth, right?

I just hate snake oil I guess, and Casey sells it by the truckload.

ebear