A critical point to make when discussing freedom is that saying one should be free to do something is not the same thing at all as saying that doing it is a good idea.

I often say that market forces "work." This is not Pollyanna talk. This is the same thing as saying evolution by natural selection works. Both tend to self-correct mistakes and create stable and robust large systems, but the process for the smaller segments of the system is not painless, or even survivable.

In a world where financial idiots weren't shielded from failure for decades, this sort of crap might be weeded out a lot more quickly and hopefully would be isolated to smaller segments of the system.

As it is, our financial community is now the equivalent of island-dwelling fat flightless birds.