While not being exactly the same people, for obvious ideological reasons, the same type of people are now arguing, exactly as die-hard communists argue, that it's not the system that's at fault it's the way the system is managed.
Of course, the problem with this scenario is that pure capitalism has no regulation and therefore no coherent way to manage it. If you want to sell something, you can. If somebody wants to buy something, you can sell it. Currently that means hedging (I love the way this is from the gambling term to hedge your bets and no-one seems have noticed or drawn that particular parallel yet), short-selling and trading in ANYTHING, especially debt, without wondering what you're buying or the risk involved in doing so.
700bn dollars is huge, about $2292 per US citizen. That kind of intervention would never be allowed in a truly capitalist society. There wouldn't be a government to bail you out as you'd be using medicorp for all of your health needs, civicompany for collecting your dustbins and army plc to protect your borders. In pure capitalism there are no mechanisms to bail out failing companies, you should have been more shrewd with your money. What this relies on is the absolute trustworthiness and competence of all the people in the system. As we have seen recently, people are still making money from all of the dubious practices that got us in to this mess to begin with and the decisions that led up to this disaster are hardly awe-inspiring.
True capitalism, no matter how it's managed, is worse than the current system. Next time someone blames the management, let them know that greed got us in to this mess and as we all know from Gordon Gecko - 'Greed is good'.
