Megan McArdle

Mad Ireland:

"Which just points up how little this crisis seems to be associated with any particular regulatory change, or 'free market ideologues' in the government, or even housing lending--Austria is about to topple because of its massive exposure to Eastern Europe. And though you'd never know it from listening to most of the commentary, we're weathering this crisis better than many, even most, more statist countries--even Canada may suffer worse than we do, because their economy is so exposed to our importing appetite. When you look at how countries are performing in this crisis, what seems more relevant than a free market government is how big your country is, and how dependent it is on the global economy. On both metrics, we're actually in pretty good shape"