Hvis Larry og Sergey trengte et lån...

Tenk om to nyutdannede Stanford-studenter - Larry og Sergey - kom til banken med en ide om å skape et selskap som skulle hete Google og skulle tjene penger på reklame på internett. Og ba om lån i en bank som nettopp var overtatt av staten.

Ville de få lån? Thomas Freidman tviler sterkt. Og han mener at:

The banks that are surviving the best today, the ones that are buying others and not being bought — like JPMorgan Chase or Banco Santander, based in Spain — are not surviving because they were better regulated than the banks across the street but because they were better run. Their leaders were more vigilant about their risk exposure than any regulator required them to be.

Bottom line: We must not overshoot in regulating the markets just because they overshot in their risk-taking. That’s what markets do. We need to fix capitalism, not install socialism. Because, ultimately, we can’t bail our way out of this crisis. We can only grow our way out — with more innovation and entrepreneurship, which create new businesses and better jobs.

So let’s keep our eyes on the prize. Save the system, install smart regulations and get the government out of the banking business as soon as possible so that the surviving banks can freely and unabashedly get back into their business: risk-taking without recklessness.