Free market vs. The Empire

It's kind of interesting to have been reading about this for years, in places like Empire of Debt and its authors' Daily Reckoning site, but it's still a little startling to see it reported on the BBC:

"The era of American global leadership, reaching back to the Second World War, is over... The American free-market creed has self-destructed while countries that retained overall control of markets have been vindicated."

"In a change as far-reaching in its implications as the fall of the Soviet Union, an entire model of government and the economy has collapsed ...

It's a silly stretch for anyone to describe the American economy in recent years as "free market," but the gist of the observation is still compelling. Is this the end of the era of the American empire? Time will tell. The U.S. government's attempted solution is anything but free-market-friendly. Central planning and top-down micromanagement continue to be the hallmarks of the Washington, D.C., mentality. If anything, the new law is an attempt to consolidate imperial power even further.

The current situation doesn't feel like a defeat for free markets. It reminds me more of the climax of Atlas Shrugged. Did Congress just pass the Steel Unification Plan? How do I find that gulch?