COMPASSIONATE CONSERVATISM...

With the collapse of the dot-com bubble, I recall an economist saying that fewer computer programmers driving Ferrari's is probably a good thing and at the time I thought this was a terribly presumptuous remark. That attitude is still with us, this time from the University of Chicago, home of the American Free Market Fairy.

Friedman Would Be Roiled as Chicago Disciples Rue Repudiation
By John Lippert

Dec. 23 (Bloomberg) -- John Cochrane was steaming as word of U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s plan to buy $700 billion in troubled mortgage assets rippled across the University of Chicago in September.

Cochrane had been teaching at the bastion of free-market economics for 14 years and this struck at everything that he -- and the school -- stood for.

“We should have a recession,” Cochrane said in November, speaking to students and investors in a conference room that looks out on Lake Michigan. “People who spend their lives pounding nails in Nevada need something else to do.”

I imagine a few of those people in Nevada and elsewhere would love to have a talk with this punk who lives inside the academic bubble. Here's another reason we can't let the morality of the marketplace run America:

Wal-Mart Will Pay Up to $640 Million in Settlement (Update3)
By Margaret Cronin Fisk

Dec. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world’s largest retailer, will pay as much as $640 million to settle 63 federal and state class actions claiming the company cheated hourly workers and forced them to work through breaks.