According to thinkprogress.org, 12/9/2009

The House GOP leadership "met with more than 100 lobbyists at the Capitol Visitors Center" yesterday to strategize about how to kill financial reform legislation. One lobbyist who attended the meeting told the press that "the message was...the Democratic majority are ruining America, ruining capitalism."

Wrong. And Wrong, again.

The Democratic majority is not the political problem. The political problem is the "no-no-no, no to everything" minority who wants to fast track back to a fantasy time when the illusion was that free markets solved all problems.

The real problem, however, is not that any politicians are "ruining capitalism." Capitalists are doing that without outside assistance.

Market economies make things work. Other economic systems can't and don't work. But just as a sporting event needs rules and referees to enforce the rules, markets need rules and someone to enforce the rules.

Otherwise,

1. The biggest bullies make the rules.
   
2. Life becomes a zero-sum game: one person's gain is another person's loss. The size of the economic pie ceases to grow, and the relative sizes of the pieces of the pie shift in favor of greed and avarice.
   
3. A tiny minority accumulates most of the wealth. The majority is a large impoverished class. Note that this is an inevitable result of the redistribution of wealth that occurs when bullies rule the streets.
   
4. Anyone who manages to 'move up' from the bottom rung becomes a threat to those at the top of the ladder. The power that comes with wealth is applied to push the upstarts back into the pit of poverty.
5. If there are too many upstarts, the mobsters put on slick suits and go to Washington. There the mobsters buy the laws needed to not just push back, but to also punish. It's called socialism for the rich.
   
6. Life ceases to be even merely a game. It becomes oppression.
   

All of that changes when the reformers take control and make sure there are rules and referees who can enforce the rules. That, in turn, assures that markets - and the benefits of markets - are accessible to all.

When markets are truly accessible to all, society and capitalism thrive. Truly free markets are the markets that are well-behaved.

Reformers, not capitalists, are capitalism's best friend. Capitalists, not reformers, are the ones who make socialism thrive.

Capitalism would be a good thing, if it weren't for capitalists. You may quote me.