For us heartless capitalists, can be truly thankful we don’t live in North Korea or Cuba, where the free market is a demon to be slain with all due and undue haste. However, in the words of Ron Paul, “Capitalism should not be condemned, because we’ve never had it.”

The idea that we live in a fully-fledged market economy, abiding by capitalist principles, has been severely dented in recent times by the government’s reaction to the Northern Rock crisis. It started off with the government throwing £24bn at the bank in a misguided attempt to restore confidence, and has continued farcically for the past month.

In today’s PMQs, we had Gordon Brown refuse to answer a perfectly valid question by Lib Dem acting leader and Orange Booker Vincent Cable about whether the government had indeed spent £24bn propping up Northern Rock. And Brown astonishing refused to explain or justify such a massive expenditure of taxpayers’ money.

As far as Northern Rock is concerned, matters about what is actually happening within the company are obviously of commercial confidence. I gather that the stories in the newspapers this morning are about papers unrelated to the Treasury, the Bank of England or the Financial Services Authority, and only to Northern Rock itself. I cannot comment on those confidential papers.

But, since the government just paid Northern Rock £24bn - with the expectation that it’ll lose £2bn of it - the taxpayer would be quite justified in arguing that we own Northern Rock’s arse. If we want them to jump, they’d bloody well jump. And if we want to know how Northern Rock is getting itself out of trouble, the government had better tell us. Either that or the crooks should give us our £24bn back.

It’s another tale of the government being secretive about state business, following the disclosure that the government didn’t tell the public about the employment of illegal immigrants to guard Metropolitan Police sites because they didn’t think it would play well with the voters (the issue that David Cameron raised in PMQs today).

Equally bad for government-voter relations would be the collapse of a high street bank, so the government decided to do something fundamentally stupid by guaranteeing a business that frankly shouldn’t have been operating as it was. Mervyn King has said:

What we want to do is to give incentives for people to behave properly, so in judging the interest rate at which we lent to Northern Rock we asked ourselves the question: “At what interest rate would they have to pay in borrowing from us today that would make them regret not having taken out an insurance policy as Countrywide did before the 9th of August?”

But they should have asked, “How the hell can we make them regret it more than making them go out of business?” That would cost the taxpayer nothing, and create a pretty darn strong disincentive for companies to act that irresponsibly in future.

Instead, this government rewards irresponsibility by loaning them taxpayers’ money at below commercial rates. That is, they rob from those people that made the right decisions, and reaped what they sowed, and gave it to people that made the wrong decisions. They should have been made to reap the whirlwind.

Former astronaut Frank Borman said, “Capitalism without bankruptcy is like Christianity without hell”, and, as CEO of Eastern Air Lines - which itself went bankrupt - he should know. Capitalism can’t work without the incentives; if there are no incentives to succeed, no disincentives to fail, the market resorts to socialist lethargy: encouraging bad behaviour and cutting off the invisible hand in an orgy of Sharia retribution.

Here we have a government hell-bent on taking the ’sharp corners’ off capitalism, when it’s those ’sharp corners’ that are the cutting edge of capitalism, and its actual purpose. We need, instead, a government that doesn’t despise the free market. On that doesn’t rob taxpayers blind. One that isn’t afraid to take tough decisions or stand by as others make them for themselves. We need a government that’s open and honest. Sadly, in the vein of Ron Paul, we can barely condemn this government’s dishonesty, because we’ve never had one that has shown a shred of decency.

I’ve just been alerted to a ridiculous inept and hysterical editorial by Trevor Kavanagh on the run on the Northern Rock. I really hate having to delve into the Sun more than I have to. Its snivelling little pages, each one filled with more opinion and less fact than the last, make me want to wretch. But, if 3.5m Britons can stomach it, I guess I can, too.

Nobody knows what’s out there. And if they do, they aren’t telling us.

Way to cool the hysteria, Trevor. “Something is happening. We don’t know what, but we know it’s bad, because it’s to do with rich people.”

The facts we do know are both incredibly complicated - and alarmingly simple.

Trevor knows his audience. If you’re interested in ‘incredibly complicated’, don’t read the Sun. If you want alarmist and simplist, read on.

Greedy, immoral bankers dished out cash they didn’t own in reckless loans to millions of poor folk they knew couldn’t afford them.

Bad bankers. Greed is bad. Money is immoral. Sorry, that’s a bit glib. Populist drivel, but glib nonetheless. So, let’s get this straight. The “greedy, immoral bankers” loaned money they didn’t own to “poor folk” - who spent money they didn’t own on new kitchens and holidays in the Algarve.

Heck, the bankers even KNEW the poor people were, well, poor, despite that fact never occurring to Mr and Mrs Ecclethorpe when they were on the 16th green in Albufeira. Man, those credit ratings are good. So the bankers must be the guilty party. Or, maybe it was the poor folk that chose to borrow the money in the first place. The poor folk that knew their own circumstances better than anyone else, and accepted the responsibility for their own actions by signing the contract. Naughty bankers.

Northern Rock is not alone. Barclays Bank is in trouble. So are other global giants.

Barclays is really in trouble. They’re losing money all over the place. And they’re really on the defensive. Yeah, right. Mr Kavanagh read one story about Barclays needing an emergency loan - to remedy a technological bank clearing error - and he thinks it means they’re on the brink of collapse. Leave the business news to the business men, sonny.

During downturns, interest rates were kept low, tempting us to borrow beyond our means as unscrupulous banks offered FIVE times what we earn. And if we exaggerated our income, they didn’t probe too deeply.

You lied to a bank about your salary to secure a mortgage, and they’re the unscrupulous ones?

But, let’s be fair to Trevor Kavanagh. He’s not a business reporter, but a political reporter. Well, I say ‘reporter’, but ‘rambler’ is probably more appropriate. His analysis gets better when he returns to the political rambling.

And governments encouraged us to [borrow ridiculous amounts] despite abundant warnings we were living beyond our means.

Correct. We had abundant warnings. However, the government’s ridiculous low interest rates were set, for political purposes, lower than they should have been, resulting in a spike in inflation. Now, the Bank of England has realised its mistake, increased rates closer to their natural equilibrium position, and dumped everyone up crap creek. Hooray for government intervention in the economy.

Hanging on to our own money, Gordon Brown decided, meant less tax for his stupendously inefficient spending spree on public services.

I don’t even know where the causality is there, but I agree that the supposedly ‘public’ services are stupendously inefficient. And that Gordon Brown is a nonce.

For the first time in a decade, we are hearing doubts about the economy, which is so deeply in debt. The timing could not be worse. Especially for anyone thinking of an autumn election.

If only Kavanagh had said this first. Of course it’s bad news for Gordon Brown. He’s screwed us all over by failing to contain himself in the Treasury, and pressing the big scary red buttons and pulling the big crackling levers that any economist could have told him not to touch. Sadly, Brown was a politics lecturer, not an economics lecturer, because that could have saved us an awful lot of trouble.

The Sun’s argument is weak, and terribly nauseating. Populist drum-beating, propagated by Kavanagh in the editorial, is the worst kind of so-called ‘journalism’. It’s just three bad news stories strung together, and, hey presto: a week’s editorial done and Trevor’s cheque’s in the post. But, it must work, because stupid people love bad news (how else could you explain the Sun’s decision to put Madeleine McCann on their front cover every day for the whole summer?). The problem is, it’s a morass, just like the economy. If only, like Brown, Kavanagh had stuck to politics, rather than venturing into, and screwing up, the economic side.