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Vince Carroll in the Rocky Mountain News notes the same thing I heard in yesterday’s Inaugural Address (and posted here yesterday, see below), Pres. Obama sees our powerful market economy as the way out of the current financial mess. From: http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2009/jan/21/carroll-promising-signs/

What's that he said? "It has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things - some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path toward prosperity and freedom." Was that President Barack Obama channeling the free-market economist Milton Friedman in Tuesday's inaugural address?

And then this: "Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control . . ." The two surprising but comforting words in that sentence are "expand freedom."

After all, most any liberal Democrat would acknowledge that markets generate wealth; by no means all, however, or perhaps even many, would agree that markets' power to expand freedom is "unmatched."

If the president really does appreciate that markets are uniquely powerful agents of freedom, as a man of his discernment should, it is a very good sign indeed.