The housing and financial crisis could not have occurred in the absence of government housing and monetary policies.

We think of prices as simply the notation of how much we must pay for things. But the price system accomplishes far more than that. Hundreds of millions of people buying and selling, and abstaining from buying and selling, generate a system of signals - prices to producers and consumers about relative scarcities and demand. Through this system, consumers can convey to producers their subjective priorities and entrepreneurs can invest accordingly.

We must acknowledge, of course, that what looks like failure to us Americans outside the privileged elite may not actually be failure for our overlords.

The alternative to the market process is government control, and we know where that principle leads.

The more power government has to provide things, the more power it has to dictate terms.

No matter how much the government controls the economic system, any problem will be blamed on whatever small zone of freedom that remains.

The government's coercive taxing power necessarily creates two classes: those who create and those who consume the wealth expropriated and transferred by that power.