What's referred to as "the market" is simply a collection of millions, perhaps billions, of independent decision-makers. No economist believes that markets are perfect, like heaven or a utopia. But the relevant comparisons are to the alternatives that we have on Earth. When there's market allocation, mistakes and shenanigans are detected and ruthlessly punished. After all, it wasn't the Securities and Exchange Commission, whose charter is to protect investors, who discovered Enron's and WorldCom's misdeeds, punished them by making their stock worthless and made heads roll. It was the market.

What happens when Congress cooks the books by concealing expenditures, uses sleight-of-hand with the Social Security account to boast of a balanced budget and tells us federal liabilities are $6 trillion when in fact they're really closer to $35 trillion? What happens when Congress exempts itself from any semblance of Generally Accepted Accounting Practices (GAAP), which it imposes on the business community? Absolutely nothing happens.

As for me, I'll take the profit-driven motives of market participants any day over the do-good-driven motives of government officials and their underlings.