there is a notion abroad that we have been brought to crisis by unbridled capitalism. no. we've been brought to crisis by unbridled state/capital identifications/configurations, by squishy totalitarianism. a situation in which the treasury department is essentiall indistinguishable from goldman sachs is not, putting it mildly, one of dog-eat-dog undisturbed private competition. the markets were highly regulated by the state, only the state and the institutions it was regulating were intertwined and symbiotic. this should not be conceived as private-sector dominance of the state, but as the continuing merger of the two into a single system or even a single institution. and in my view theobama people are not amewliorating but intensifying this relationship. it's anachronistic to call that socialism.