Because we live in Financial Times

This weekend, I bought the Financial Times as usual - it's not every day that I buy a newspaper on paper, but that's not what I want to record. I took it to Ichioshi, Vevey's only sushi restaurant (so far) and settled down to read it while I was drinking my green tea.

I became engrossed in reading the editorial, which was a defence of the free market. Now the logic is either too complicated for me to follow or simply flawed, but the article seems to be saying that we need to support the free market economy and the economic system we have because it has done us so much good, and what may await us if we allow them to collapse may be so much worse.

The paper praises their 'matchless record when it comes to raising living standards' as if that was all that mattered. The warning is implicit - last time the markets collapsed like this, it gave birth directly to fascism, so we should keep them afloat and bail out all the Wall Street pirates unconditionally for fear of the beast being re-born.

But one conclusion sticks in my mind: Markets are places of trial and, very frequently, error. Their genius is not perfect efficiency, but the rewarding of success and the weeding out of failure. No better alternative has ever presented itself.

This is a bit like saying of the USA that it is enough to be big; to be good as well would be asking too much. I do not believe this is acceptable in either case.