Barack Obama today at his G-20 press conference, to reporters from across the world:

It doesn't mean the state micromanaging -- ( sneezes) -- excuse me -- I've been fighting this all week -- it doesn't mean that we want the state dictating salaries; we don't. We -- I strongly believe in a free-market system, and as I -- as I think people understand in America, at least, people don't resent the rich; they want to be rich. And that's good. But we want to make sure that there's mechanisms in place that holds people accountable and produces results.

I heard it live, I heard him stress: people don't  resent the rich, they want to BE rich--and then after a pause, affirm: And that's good.

More, shortly thereafter:

I think that there's always been a spectrum of opinion about how unfettered the free market is. And along that spectrum, I think there have been some who believe in very fierce regulation and are very suspicious of globalization, and there are others who think that it's always -- that the market is always king. And I think what we've learned here, but if anybody had been studying history they would have understood earlier, is that the market is the most effective mechanism for creating wealth and distributing resources to produce goods and services that history has ever known, but that it goes off the rail sometimes; that if it's completely unregulated, that if there are no thoughtful frameworks to channel the creative energy of the market, that it can end up in a very bad place.

And so, in that sense, I think that we just went through a couple of decades where there was an artificial complacency about the dangers of markets going off the rails. And a crisis like this reminds us that we just have to put in some common-sense rules of the road, without throwing out the enormous benefits that globalization have brought in terms of improving living standards, reducing the cost of goods, and bringing the world closer together.

I hate to break the spell, but it really is way past time those in denial give up their imaginary Obama now, he's just not going to show up. He wasn't just pandering to the middle on the campaign trail and in his campaign white papers on economics, he meant what he said. He didn't get stuck with Geithner and Summers and others of the same school, he purposefully chose them. He's not waiting for pitchfork rebellions to allow him to go to the left on economics, because he doesn't want to be there and he doesn't believe most Americans are there. He's not against capitalism, he likes it. (Not only that, but rumor has it, he even likes some people that are also extremely wealthy!)  He never lied about who he was on this front, either.

For those who missed it, I recommend reading the entire transcript or watching a video, it was quite a bit more interesting than his last one.

My Manhattan Project
How I helped build the bomb that blew up Wall Street,
 
By Michael Osinski for the April 6, 2009 New York Magazine:

I have been called the devil by strangers and "the Facilitator" by friends. It's not uncommon for people, when I tell them what I used to do, to ask if I feel guilty. I do, somewhat, and it nags at me. When I put it out of mind, it inevitably resurfaces, like a shipwreck at low tide. It's been eight years since I compiled a program, but the last one lived on, becoming the industry standard that seeded itself into every investment bank in the world.

I wrote the software that turned mortgages into bonds....

Captions from the cartoon illustrations that accompany the article:

I arrived on Wall Street in 1985 to work at Salomon Brothers as a computer programmer, one foot out of the typing pool....I learned how to bundle home mortgages into bonds. As my mentor described it, "you put chicken into the grinder and out comes sirloin."...Traders loved the software, as it did more of the thinking, they were able to do less....