In the Event That You Need Another Reason to Damn George Bush, Alan Greenspan and Phil Gramm

The spook community is now coming to the view that the collapse of the world's economy (a collapse that has at its root cause the twisted ideology of the Republicans and the acolytes of Ayn Rand) is a far greater threat to world stability than any terrorist threat.

Sounding more like an economist than the warfighting Navy commander he once was, National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair told a Senate panel Thursday that if the crisis lasts more than two years, it could cause some nations’ governments to collapse.</p>

And a number of allies the United States depends on might no longer be able to afford to meet their own defense and humanitarian obligations, he said.

Blair said already the financial meltdown, which started in the United States and quickly infected other countries, has eroded confidence in American economic leadership and belief in free markets.

“Time is probably our greatest threat. The longer it takes for the recovery to begin, the greater the likelihood of serious damage to U.S. strategic interests,” he told the Senate Intelligence Committee, as Congress prepares to vote Friday on a $789 billion stimulus package.

Think about that for a bit. Contemplate the possibility that unfettered, unregulated free-market capitalism in the financial sector may wind up wreaking more misery and misfortune around the world than the acolytes of Karl Marx ever did. It wasn't communism that has the world's economy crumbling around the foundations, it was the greed-driven louts, the ideologues who thought that there was no such thing as a good regulation or good controls, that given total freedom, the market would self-regulate.

Really. Let's also not forget that those who worshiped at the temple of Libertarianism also believed that no company would ever knowingly sell adulterated or contaminated products because that would damage their reputation and they'd be out of business. (Hey, you guys want some peanut butter crackers while you mull over the wreckage you've brought about?)

But none of this will stop the party of Hoover from maintaining that the best thing to do is just let the collapse of the world's economy proceed unhindered.

Fortunately, there are now some grownups in charge.

(H/T to Yankee Sailor)