Chait has a theory:
It's difficult to work out a free market response. If you let Wall Street invest however it likes, it will eventually precipitate a financial crisis, with massive government intervention being the only option to save the economy. Or else you can break up the big banks, or limit their ability to take on systemic risk. Either way, government has to get involved at some step in the process. It almost seems like conservatives can't choose which form of government intervention to accept, so many of them just aren't choosing.
My view is that conservatism has become so reflexively anti-government that it has nothing to say on the pressing questions of the hour, most of which require some - smart and narrowly tailored - government action. Adam Smith would have no trouble re=regulating Wall Street. Why is the GOP so gun-shy?