Rand Paul, Obama Distrust Free Markets. Why?

Rand Paul and President Obama. One a libertarian, the other a left-liberal progressive. But they apparently have at least one thing in common: a belief that markets are fragile things. Both subscribe to the view that a speculative bubble caused the Great Recession. As Obama said in his recent Knox College speech, “But by the time I took office in 2009, the [housing] bubble had burst, costing millions of Americans their jobs, their homes, and their savings.” (Actually, it was passive Fed tightening in 2008, in a replay of the Fed’s Great Depression error, that turned a possible modest downturn into the Great Recession.)