Marc is sharp at observations but his logics/reasonling need be more accurate imho.

"The biggest problem is too much intervention. Whatever the government touches is usually done worse than in the private sector"

We see US's 2 largest cancer tumors are

Fed, or the centra bank of US, which has the legal power to set the national deposit and loan interest baseline, meaning they can influence the bottom line of everyone, every company's profit. Plus, they can create trillions currency only by adding a few zeros to their balance sheet . Ulike 90%+ of countries world wide, Fed is a syndicate of top private banks with top legal power in finance, and this interest/power conflict is the cause of this cancer.

Medical care. US will spend $2.1 trillion in 2010 on medical care expense, 3 times of national defence, 17% of the GDP and still growing. Canada spend about 11%, Gemany and other euro contries between 10-12%. The major difference of US is that US's medical system is mostly privatized and controlled by a few private monopoly players. Medical care is a life necessity, fully privatization and monopoly play is like to give a blank check book to private doctors and hosptials.

imho, the biggest problem is wrong interventions to fool the US voters, and the majority of them have no clues of what is going on - the best example is the high percentage against medical reforms and their silence of the $700B robbery. More and longer painful time ahead for them.