“Did we learn nothing from the Savings and Loan Crisis of the late 1980s? The accounting crises of 2000-01 or the bailout of the airlines in 2004? The current crisis may indeed be worse than any we have seen since the Great Depression, but the narrative is actually fairly common in the recent history of American capitalism.

The last 30 years are littered with examples of two dissonant themes: On the one hand, we have a corporate sector advocating deregulation, singing the praises of a laissez-faire market, and criticizing government interference as fundamentally inefficient. On the other hand, we have corporations—and the population—asking for bailouts when they can’t survive the realities of the free markets they have advocated.