Despite the fact that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is a dyed in the wool free market conservative, events over the last year has forced the Treasury Department to intervene in financial markets to a degree never before seen in American history.That's the conclusion in this insightful, informative article in today's Washington Post by David Cho and Neil Irwin. Allowing market forces to work, according to Paulson, would have plunged the nation into a credit crisis that would have affected all other sectors of the economy and led to a financial meltdown.The resulting macro effect on the economy would have been catastrophic, say experts who see the reluctance with which Paulson intervened in crisis after crisis. The fact is, the crisis has gone far beyond just the mortgage security credit crunch and is now affecting markets as exotic as student loans:In April, Paulson helped the Department of Education set up emergency programs to ensure students could get loans as private lenders...(Read Full Post)