Fareed Zakaria takes to the cover of Newsweek this week to pass out his “Capitalist Manifesto.”

It’s not exactly stirring reading, unlike that other manifesto.

Few apologias are.

And that’s what this one is for the current crisis of capitalism: a big blanket of “Oh, it’s not so bad.”

Says Zakaria: “A few years from now, strange as it may sound, we might all find that we are hungry for more capitalism, not less.”

Here’s his argument.

First, he says, “When countries need growth, they turn to markets.” But not when the markets have capitulated, as they have now, and as they did in the 1930. In such circumstances, it’s much more prudent to turn to government for growth.

Then he piles on some “ifs” to arrive at the “then” that he prefers.

Hold on while I quote him:

“If, in the years ahead, the American consumer remains reluctant to spend,

if federal and state governments groan under their debt,

if government-owned companies remain expensive burdens,

then private sector activity will become the only path to create jobs.”

Well, he boiled the alternative right off that sentence.

And that alternative is federal deficit spending to create jobs and alleviate state budget crunches.

Having performed this sleight of hand, he all but says voila and then concludes: “capitalism remains the most productive economic engine we have yet invented.”

But the engine isn’t working right now. And it’s something serious, despite Zakaria’s sophistry.

His remedy for that is archaic and disproven: “We can ask that people steer themselves and their institutions with a greater reliance on a moral compass.”

Alan Greenspan has already pleaded guilty to believing in this myth that capitalists will be able to self-regulate.

But now Zakaria gives the myth another spin.