Free Soukh Economics

The Christian Science Monitor reports on the burgeoning free market in Iraq. Things are off to a heartening start, although there are undertones of coalition plans to "manage" the transistion (deciding, for instance, which state enterprises will survive and which to have shut down). I doubt we'd want to make them go cold-turkey laissez faire right off the bat, of course—the last thing we need right now is massive economic dislocation—but especially in an oil-rich nation, there's the danger of (probably necessary) temporary safety nets becoming permanent state sinecures.