I had just read this in a thoughtful column by Kevin Hassett:

The U.S. has always distinguished itself relative to its major trading partners by having a higher faith in free markets and a greater respect for the limits of big government. Sure, the U.S. passed a stimulus package now and then, but it also let failure run its course and refused to resort to excessive big- government intrusions into the private sector.

The risk is that we will forget this lesson. First we bailed out the financial companies; now President-elect Barack Obama is asking for $50 billion to bail out the auto companies, an effort backed by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. Next we will see a tax credit for people who buy General Motors Corp. cars at stores of bankrupt retailer Circuit City, provided they use the car to go to a Detroit Lions game.

A look at economic history suggests that the crazy policy intrusions have to stop.

Failure can be a good thing, and recessions force economic stragglers to make tough decisions. Those tough decisions set the stage for the recovery.

Then I read this in a puzzling column by Bill Kristol: "I don’t pretend to know just what has to be done. But I suspect that free-marketers need to be less doctrinaire and less simple-mindedly utility-maximizing, and that they should depend less on abstract econometric models."

Finally, a note posted below Kristol's article cleared it up: "Paul Krugman is off today." Nice of Kristol to fill in for him.