An opinion piece in today’s Wall Street Journal by Gary Becker titled “The Great Recession and Government Failure” argues that actions by the federal government since 2008 are to blame for the depth and length of the so-called Great Recession. A popular political theme has been that capitalism failed. He makes a compelling case otherwise. Becker is the 1992 Nobel economics laureate, is professor of economics at the University of Chicago and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.