Actually the evil monopolies we're "taught" about at the NEA/Pravda schools were in most cases government sanctioned monopolies. The railroads and steam ships (just google Fulton and his insane 6 ship monopoly until Vanderbilt got free market access restored with tremendous results) and the very isolated but highly successful free market railroads that were able to pop up here and there.

Fast forward to today and Lehman is allowed to liquidate to the great benefit of Goldman, which happens to have a revolving door (both ways) to the highest levels of government finance regulators, and an ever increasing one way reliance on taxpayers for endless bailouts and its pretty apparent that little has changed. Yet the unionoids waste capital on idiotic nonsense like cardcheck and bloated TARP bailouts of UAW contracts rewrapped in working class hyperbole as "saving the entire auto industry from the evil forginers" who, by the way, are building car plants here as fast as they can. Even the ones from the "cheap labor" countries. But not with the UAW as a rule, so government weight has to be thrown around to centrally plan everything, for great success.