AndrewSullivan responds to the Gregg Easterbrook piece I posted yesterday>

CEO GREED: I’m with Gregg Easterbrook on pursuing the malfeasant CEOs who have essentially robbed shareholders while paying themselves exorbitant sums. Those of us who believe in free markets as the least worst way of organizing economies should be particularly incensed at this duplicity and larceny. But one reason for some restraint on the hype is precisely because so many liberals want to use these crimes as a rationale for enhancing government power over the economy, returning to the failed redistributionism and dirigisme of the past, and junking much of the free market gains of the last two decades. Gregg also fails to talk about bubble psychology as an essential context for these crimes. Such psychology excuses nothing. But it does help us understand why the last two years were particularly bad. On a minor note, am I the only one to object to setnences (sic, JQ) like the following: “Has conservatism reached the point that any development that transfers money to white male CEOs is deemed acceptable?” Why the “white male” interpolation? It’s factually accurate in the vast number of cases, but their gender and race is surely irrelevant to these CEO crimes. Can you imagine the New Republic publishing a similar phrase about “black males” in the context of, say, urban crime? Silly question.

Sullivan’s point about white males is a good one, though it’s surprising how often the whisteblower in recent cases has been a woman.
On the other hand, he’s whistling in the dark about the impact on free markets. Of the past two decades, only the five years from 1996 on produced any real gains for ordinary Americans, let alone the poor. It is precisely this period that now looks like an unsustainable bubble, generated by easy money and ubiquitous fraud.