The following is one of the most infuriating and dumbfounding editorials you'll read in a long time.  Sell all of your weapons and lawn-care implements before reading or you might want to storm Capitol Hill.

It is infuriating because the crony capitalism it describes is so brazen and so embraced by both political parties.  The left says that examples like this prove that capitalism doesn't work, when what it really proves is that the current economic system in the USA is the antithesis of free-market capitalism and akin to Mussolini's corporatism.

The editorial is dumfounding because it says that the Agriculture Department was responsible for overseeing the failed hedge fund, MF Global.  The Agriculture Department!!!!  When I visit D.C., I skip the tourist attractions and visit the monument to statism, the headquarters building of the Dept. of Agriculture.  Right off the Mall, it is heavily fortified with guard stations and is three stories tall, a block wide, and three blocks long.  When I've walked around it, I've tried to imagine what goes on inside this building as well as the hundreds of other Dept. of Agriculture buildings around the nation.  I wondered if any of the bureaucratic activity has anything whatsoever to do with growing food.  Now, thanks to the following editorial, I know one of the things that goes on there.

You'll find a photo in the editorial of the creepy looking guy who heads up the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.  Would you buy anything from this guy?  Just think, apparatchiks like him are responsible for safeguarding the nation's financial system.  I wonder if the Dept. of Agriculture regulates the sale of pitchforks.  

Mencken's Ghost