Competition and Regulation

In the December 15, 2008 issue of InformationWeek the Feedback section had a comment from Wally Garneau that I found interesting.  Regarding the government's roll in proping up companies and markets he said "...while competition is far better than regulation, in the absence of true competition, you'd better have regulation."  This comment in a nutshell explains what is so wrong with the bailouts.  By removing competition as a factor in eliminating unsuccessful companies the only way to make sure the money is not missued is to regulate it, but the regulator is government which is itself inherently worse at big business.  It's an all around failure.  We borrow money we don't have to give to companies.  We add a layer of ineffective government monitoring, and we save an unprofitable company temporarily from demise.