To Save The Economy, You Sometimes Need To Ignore Business | ThinkProgress http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2011/08/18/299356/to-save-the-economy-you-sometimes-need-to-ignore-business/

The fact of the matter is just that running an economy is not the same as running a nationwide network of big box retailers, or a diversified conglomerate, or a large bank, or an innovative electronics company, or any other successful business. People generally understand this in reverse. Nobody ever said “Bill Clinton was a good president, so he’d be a great replacement for Bill Gates when he steps down at Microsoft.” But it’s true the other way ’round as well. Businessmen have certain kinds of prejudices about economic management that neither reflect reality nor their own self-interest.

The way I tend to explain this is the two different systems have different operating paradigms. Businesses want to externalize risk and internalize profit.  Government, to the contrary, works to *internalize* risk and *externalize* profit. 

Running a business like a government is as much a recipe for disaster as the opposite.