L. Gordon Crovitz said in his Wall Street Journal article yesterday that “Markets thrive when information flows freely, and they seize up when uncertainty replaces understanding.”  This basic principle is key for risk analysis, mortgage-lending, and when considering long-term effects of any decision.  So the question becomes: how do we restore certainty into the markets?  Crovitz’s answer is clear:”We’ve had credit crises before, but as this column has reminisced, a century ago J.P. Morgan was able to resolve the Panic of 1907 simply by gathering all the key bankers in his home library and forcing them to measure and accept their losses. Like all credit crises, the sooner ours is resolved, the sooner we can learn its lessons, take our losses, and move on. Tough as this process of discovering the full losses will be on shareholders and taxpayers, the alternative of continued uncertainty and market paralysis is even worse.”That’s the kind of regulation we need.  And, rather than hindering the cause by undermining the integrity of the market, (Crovitz points out that the “data that banks used were distorted by years of government initiatives to promote homeownership”), the federal government should allow risk analysts to do their jobs. Massive federal intervention into an already weak economy is like giving bacon to a cardiac patient.  Just when the market is attempting to assess lifestyle changes and nurse its way back to health, Uncle Sam shows up with a plate of sizzling bacon in the form of fresh, ‘free’ capital.