At war with Wall Street

The LAT argues, unsurprisingly, that Obama is right to crack down on Wall Street big wigs but it's hard to see how that will help. Left-wingers naturally dislike and disapprove of free enterprise and the people who engage in it, preferring instead socialism and big government. Both socialism and free enterprise capitalism are messy but free enterprise capitalism at least has a track record of producing prosperity and high living standards. Big government has a track record of producing stagnation and inflation. Socialism has produced economies like the one in East Germany which collapsed along with the rest of the Soviet bloc and was absorbed by democratic and capitalistic West Germany. Or the one in the United Kingdom, which was nearly bankrupt until it was rescued by Margaret Thatcher.