"I have a TV that tells me regulationism is replacing free-market capitalism."

It is true that television news worldwide is talking about an increase in regulation. But apparently David doesn't quite grasp what his telly is telling him.

It is hardly "regulationism" as an ideology.

I heard a news commentator remark yesterday that the current world-wide economic crisis was not the result of capitalism per se, but because there is a current dearth of capitalistic entrepreneurs (people who invent new things, produce new products, and offer new services) and a surplus of capitalistic speculators—people buying "futures" in products and services that may or may not ever exist. Later in the commentary, he referred to this as "a capitalist casino mentality."

Capitalism, with it's inherent profit motive and competition, functions quite well when it results in new and better products and services at lower prices, but experience has shown that without certain "rules of the road," it can degenerate into dog-eat-dog competition and speculation on profits from products and services that don't yet exist. When this reaches a critical point (as it did in 1929 and again currently), the balloon explodes and the economy collapses.

Government regulation, like those instituted during the Roosevelt administration in the 1930s, provides the needed "rules of the road" and watchdog agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission and others, also initiated in the 1930s, police those rules to prevent the economy from reaching such a point. Unscrupulous businessmen bridled at the restrictions imposed by these regulations and the agencies that enforced them, and during the Reagan administration, through a combination of Reagan's "voodoo economics" policies and lobbying (bribing elected officials), they got many of these regulations rescinded. And by various means, they got the regulatory agencies staffed with their own people, who saw to it that the regulations that remained were not enforced.

The result is the current economic mess.

There is a strong move afoot, especially among the American people and some candidates for office (and people and governments of other countries also affect by the monetary crisis) for the reinstatement (or institution, if not already in place) of the kind of regulations, imposed by the Roosevelt administration in the 1930s, that were the major factor in ending the Great Depression.

THAT, David, is the kind of regulation you are currently hearing about on your telly. And it has nothing to do with immigration/emigration.

Nor who can sing which songs.

Don Firth