No it's the recklessness that is the problem.

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Be thou faithful unto Death
And I will give thee a crown of Life

"The problem with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, it's just they know so much that isn't so"
- Ronald Reagan

"A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger, is prepared for a Master and deserves one"
- Alexander Hamilton

Oh cruel fate, to be thusly boned. Ask not for whom the bone bones. It bones for thee.

Recklessness caused by unchecked capitalistic expansion.

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ANARCHISM, the name given to a principle or theory of life and conduct under which society is conceived without government — harmony in such a society being obtained, not by submission to law, or by obedience to any authority, but by free agreements concluded between the various groups, territorial and professional, freely constituted for the sake of production and consumption, as also for the satisfaction of the infinite variety of needs and aspirations of a civilized being.
-Peter Kropotkin

Dumbasses are the ones who did it. The system works when watched.

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Be thou faithful unto Death
And I will give thee a crown of Life

"The problem with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, it's just they know so much that isn't so"
- Ronald Reagan

"A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger, is prepared for a Master and deserves one"
- Alexander Hamilton

Oh cruel fate, to be thusly boned. Ask not for whom the bone bones. It bones for thee.

I'm not exactly a fan of Rush Limbaugh (my social and foreign policy views are radically different from his), but yes, temporarily socialized banking is better than socialized medicine. Why? Because bailing out certain businesses was necessary to prevent a crisis that could have made government even bigger, while there is no such imperative in health care.

There are no positive rights- i.e. "rights" to be provided with goods and services. Therefore, if it were only those who made unwise decisions who lost money, I would not support a penny of government aid, but given that the last time we had a depression there was a disastrous encroachment on negative rights- the right of citizens to do as they please- dubbed the New Deal, a small dose of socialism (denial of negative rights) was necessary to prevent another large dose of it from being demanded. I think of it as a weakened pathogen given to the economy to innoculate it against something far worse.

I would add that no one, including me, has the right not to die. We have the right not to be killed (actively caused to die by others), but we will all die and we have no right to attempt immortality at the expense of coercing others.

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"Some people complain about the system. The system is not good, so they can't do anything. It's an excuse. Freedom is in your heart." (Jin Xing)

The reason American developed drugs are sold at lower prices in Canada (and probably Mexico too) goes something like this:

A new pharmaceutical is developed and delivered only after extensive development and testing by the drug companies at great cost to be produced.

The estimated $1 billion it costs to bring a single drug to market must be earned back if the drug companies are to continue in business.

To do that they need to sell as many "pills" as they can before their exclusive patent rights expire and the pill can be sold as a generic.

The Pharma company must make a calculation of how many pills must be sold before they actually reap a profit. (Profit equals total sales revenues minus total costs. Costs include development costs, testing etc. salaries and overhead of all employees prorated, advertising expenses [to hurry sales along before exclusive rights expire], federal corporate taxes, and all other overhead the corporation bears prorated into each unit of product or "pill/dose" produced.).

Still, the actual production costs may be quit low.

In an effort to sell as many of the “pills” as possible before the patent rights expire and the pill can be sold as a generic, the Pharma Company can gain additional income from sales at near cost to price controlled countries like Canada, Mexico, or some European countries.

Americans pay for the research and development, and the price controlled countries get a free ride for those development costs.

If pills could be freely imported back into the states from Canada, for instance, drug companies would be in a position of undercutting their solid domestic price base, and prices to a Canada would have to be renegotiated to allow for some parity in the market. Remember, the population of Canada is only about 13th of the U.S.

As much as US politicians rail against the disparity in pricing, one hopes they actually do understand. Perhaps though, they prefer to remain ignorant, while pandering to the ignorant.

But contributing to the disparity is the situation that liability costs for pharmaceutical companies are substantially less in Canada - a factor which has been estimated to account for between one-third and one-half the price differential between the US and Canada on prescription drugs. Also it is the case that generic drugs are very often priced higher in Canada than the U.S.

Here's a related side issue item: We probably have more MRI machines in our little state of Indiana than the whole of Canada does. What does this translate into? (availability for quick use to benefit the ill patient without long perilous waits like Canada/Britain....)

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American Bottoms

A Type Unit Geology ~ a system of glacial filled valleys in Southern Indiana which embraces the broader impulses of the whole region in which it is integrated.
~~~
Have You VISITED MY ALBUM Vita Brevis, Ars Longa? (Life is Short, Art is Long)

Responsibility and consequences...

2 things we don't see much of any more.... If you make bad decisions, no matter what industry or company you are, you go out of business or you are bought out by a competitor that knows how to make good decisions.

If you invest in a company that makes bad decisions and goes out of business... read the fine print... There is a risk when investing.

If you are being provided a service by a company that makes bad decisions... then you will have to find a new company to continue getting that service.

It really is that simply.

No Gov Bailouts!! Period!!

OG

Well that is very balanced of you both but, as usual, those who struggle (and future generations) will bail out those who swindle. So, in the future, don't even bother to bring up the topic of the wisdom of 'free markets'.

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Lumberjack Jane- Maine's answer to Sarah Palin

"...Sarah Palin could stride past the frontal cortex of every American and plant a 3 inch heel directly on that limbic circuit..." Sam Harris

Lets see, there has been the Chrysler bailout, the Mexico bailout, the S&L bailout, Bear Sterns, A.I,G. .... you can practically hear the golden parachutes inflating.

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Lumberjack Jane- Maine's answer to Sarah Palin

"...Sarah Palin could stride past the frontal cortex of every American and plant a 3 inch heel directly on that limbic circuit..." Sam Harris

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Even apart from the fact that the vast majority of transactions are not fraudulent, genuine capitalists oppose fraud as criminal- we simply oppose the official government engaging in theft as much as we oppose miniature governments ("private" swindlers) doing so.

Theft and fraud are not part of a free market, though they are an inherent part of government. Informed consent forms the rightful basis of contracts, and swindlers, public or nominally private, are considered criminals by capitalists.

As for the crisis in question, moreover, it was caused by the Federal Reserve lowering interest rates, so it is an excellent case for anti-inflation policies to prevent bubbles and their attendant panics, not for a more powerful government, something that itself would cause inflation.

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"Some people complain about the system. The system is not good, so they can't do anything. It's an excuse. Freedom is in your heart." (Jin Xing)