Though popularly billed as the spokesman for the free-market, it’s high time we realize Adam Smith felt government intervention in markets was necessary. “The nature of the present economic crisis illustrates very clearly the need for departures from unmitigated and unrestrained self-seeking in order to have a decent society…Smith had a diagnosis for this: he called such promoters of excessive risk in search of profits ‘prodigals and projectors’ – which, by the way, is quite a good description of many of the entrepreneurs of credit swap insurances and sub-prime mortgages in the recent past.”