Some economists in and around the University of Chicago, who founded the modern conservative tradition, had a surprisingly different take: When it comes to the really big fish in the economic pond, some felt, the only way to preserve competition was to nationalize the largest ones, which defied regulation.

This notion seems counterintuitive: after all, the school’s founders provided the intellectual framework for the laissez-faire turn against market regulation over the last half-century. But for them, “bigness” and competition could easily become mutually exclusive. One of the most important Chicago School leaders, Henry C. Simons, judged in 1934 that “the corporation is simply running away with our economic (and political) system.”

As far as i'm concerned, this shouldn't be a surprise. Monetarism is little more than the other side of the interventionist coin from Keynesianism: Instead of using tax and spend policies to manipulate the economy, use monetary policy to socialize losses through currency manipulation.

If "the corporation is simply running away with our economic (and political) system" as of 1934, what are we to divine about corporations 80 years later?