One would think neocons ran Wall Street

Irony alert, hypocrisy alert or both:

“We have the irony of a free-market administration doing things that the most liberal Democratic administration would never have been doing in its wildest dreams.”

That quote comes from financial historian Ron Chernow, talking about this week’s series of federal bailouts of financial institutions.

Per the story, it could have the biggest fallout in southeast Asia, still pissed over the IMF’s adherence to hardline capitalism in the Asian currency crisis a decade ago.

“Washington is following a different script this time,” said Yung Chul Park, a professor of economics at Korea University in Seoul, who was deeply involved in the negotiations with the IMF. “I understand why they do it. But they’ve lost credibility to some extent in pushing for opening up overseas markets to foreign competition and liberalizing economies.”

In other words, we’re now about as credible on exporting capitalism as we are on exporting democracy.