Rare Occasions Breed Less Rare Occasions

Gary Becker weighs in on the Financial Crisis:

"Finally, the "too big to fail" approach to banks and other companies should be abandoned as new long-term financial policies are developed. Such an approach is inconsistent with a free market economy. It also has caused dubious company bailouts in the past, such as the large government loan years ago to Chrysler, a company that remained weak and should have been allowed to go into bankruptcy. All the American auto companies are now asking for handouts too since they cannot compete against Japanese, Korean, and German carmakers. They will probably get these subsidies, even though these American companies have been badly managed. A "too many to fail" principle, as in the present financial crisis, may still be necessary on hopefully rare occasions, but failure of badly run big financial and other companies is healthy and indeed necessary for the survival of a robust free enterprise competitive system."

And here's the problem facing us once again. He's telling us to leave the government out of it. That's fine, but simply not realistic. Rare occasions breed less rare occasions. I'm sorry, but that's the truth in a pluralistic society.

As always, he makes good points, but they strike me as unreal in our current political climate.