A Clinton administration Commerce Department official, David Rothkopf, writes in the Financial Times:

Legislators seem to be competing to offer the most draconian new regulatory measures or to appear the most implacable in the search for malfeasance on the part of business. There are ironic echoes of a prior administration in which out-of-shape pols who had never commanded troops in battle liked nothing better than sending soldiers off to war – except that today it is out-of-shape pols who have never run a business slapping around chief executives and telling them how to manage their companies.

From a column by Samuel Brittan in this morning's Financial Times: "To start with, 'market fundamentalism', which had no real existence outside North America, is now well and truly dead....Almost no one would claim that the pattern of rewards resulting from market transactions and inherited property rights is a just one."

Funny how the one country that emerged as the world's leading economy was the one where "market fundamentalism" supposedly existed. And has the FT forgotten Margaret Thatcher?

As we've said before, the critics of "market fundamentalism" almost always have fundamental beliefs of their own, which they are often less than clear in articulating.

The crisis in Greece is fueling concern about the value of the dollar. Three pieces out this morning make related points.

Larry Kudlow writes, "The real winner yesterday? Gold. It's up about $25, to $1,200. People want real money. They do not trust the debt-laden currencies of Europe and the United States. Or, for that matter, Japan. Gold is fast becoming, once again, a reserve currency of choice."

A New York Sun editorial (yes, despite ceasing print publication, the paper is still issuing editorials on its Web site and posting other content there), says:

Voters in the Martha's Vineyard town of Oak Bluffs recently rejected, by a 172-102 vote, a proposed 2% tax increase on hotel rooms, and also voted down a proposed 3% raise for the town clerk, keeping his salary at $74,360 instead of the suggested $76,590, the Martha's Vineyard Times reports. Shortly thereafter, voters in the neighboring Martha's Vineyard town of Tisbury, also known as Vineyard Haven, voted 934 to 606 to reject a tax increase proposed to fund a $225,000 increase to police pay, the Martha's Vineyard Gazette reports.

When supermajorities on the liberal, Democratic island of Martha's Vineyard are voting down tax increases that would fund pay increases for public employees, there's something really happening in this country.

The Martha's Vineyard Times has an 1100-word article on an island resident who received a "treasured" handwritten note from Warren Buffett.

Probably not many people were watching because of all the Greece and stock-market drama, but this afternoon, the congressionally created Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission heard from representatives of Pimco, State Street, and GE Capital. Pimco's Bill Gross, unlike Lloyd Blankfein, got away with sending an underling to testify. A Pimco managing director, Paul McCulley, boasted that in 2005, sensing a bubble in the housing market, his firm sent teams "on the ground" to 20 American cities for what he called old-fashioned, shoe-leather research that involved interviewing mortgage brokers and real estate agents.

One of the members of the commission then acutely asked, if Pimco's shoe-leather research was so good, what was it doing holding all that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac debt during the financial crisis. Mr. McCulley could barely avoid a smirk as he replied, "We fully expected that our government, if push comes to shove, would wrap its arms around Fannie and Freddie. And that's precisely what happened."

"The markets have probably over-reacted to the oil spill: the fact that BP's shares have lost $30 billion in value, three times the likely cost of the clean-up, suggests that they will start to climb back," the Economist writes.

Rassmussen has two polls. One says that overall support for offshore oil drilling is down to 58%, from 72%, on news of the Gulf of Mexico spill. The second says that in Florida, 48% of voters now favor offshore oil drilling, while 35% are opposed.

The New York Times's news article on the Washington Post Company's decision to put Newsweek up for sale -- "Newsweeklies Lose Influence," is how the Times Web headline interprets the news -- reports, "Both also lowered the circulation guaranteed to advertisers: Time guarantees a 3.25 million circulation, and Newsweek just 1.5 million."

Some editor should have deleted the word "just."  After all, 1.5 million, even though it's less than Time and less than Newsweek was back in the day, and even though some of it may be "soft," is still a totally respectable paid circulation.

The New York Times's daily circulation was 951,063, according to the latest quarterly audit numbers, or "just" 951,063, if one wanted to be derisive about it.