The collapse of laissez faire

You might like to take a look at an opinion piece in the Washington Post entitled Slow Rise for a New Era by Harold Meyerson. I want to give you just the last paragraph here:

It's not just investment banks that have fallen by the wayside in the recent carnage; it's the ideology of unregulated capitalism -- of Reaganism. And if Republicans cannot find a way to disenthrall themselves from their faith in their old gods, they may ensure that the GOP itself becomes one more casualty in the collapse of laissez faire.

If anything good comes of this mess it will be the recognition that unregulated capitalism doesn't work. I hope that, indeed, has been recognized. (Of course, you would think we would have figured that out after the Gilded Age. Sadly, not many people read history anymore.)