Well yeah, it's kind of embarrassing to preach about free market, free trade, etc and heavily manipulating the "free" market at the same time.
Its not embarrassing to the monopolies and corporations in the USA - they understand all too well how the ravages of market discipline and genuine free markets should NEVER apply to them. These economic principles are for the small fish - the corner shop, the small company, the little self employed person. There can NEVER be bail outs for them. Who was it that said, "if they are too big to fail, then they are too big to exist"?
I can recall what the USA told the Asian countries in the 1990s when their economies overheated and essentially crashed. The USA strongly recommended to all the Asian countries - including Japan and Singapore to NOT implement bail out rescue packages and above all to NOT nationalise any banking institutions or important large corporations or industrial sectors. The USA then pushed ASian nations to implement further privatisation and corporatisation programs and said that allowing the financially stricken commercial sectors and corporations to collapse was a good thing and that it would lead to a stronger economy in the long run. (which is generally does, if the nations itself still controls the bulk of the assets)
And of course this was ideologically driven advice that had self interest at heart - because it was the USA and the west that snapped up corporate and state asset bargains during the economic turmoil in Asia.
And the USA did the complete opposite in the 2008 GFC to what they advised the Asian countries to do. They implemented trillion dollar tax payer funded stimulus packages (also known as corporate welfare) and nationalised the auto industry. lol
The same advice was given to Argentina when its currency and economy collapsed in the 90s, which resulted in Argentina defaulting on its loans. It caused a lot of short term pain, but Argentina recovered within a decade and is far stronger now. This is what Greece, Ireland, Spain, etc should do now - the problem is an external banking and credit crisis which the sector wishes to shift the total debt (which they created) into state hands.
So you shouldn't be embarrassed at standard practice in the USA. In good economic times, the private/corporate sector is subsidised and propped up artificially by the tax payer, and during bad economic times, the private/corporate sector is subsidised and propped up by the tax payer.
Its the fascist Corpocracy at its grandest!
And the media (which is a corporatized entity anyway) remains silent or totally spins the truth into total BS
cheers