Friday, September 26, 2008

The end of laisser faire capitalism?

As we learnt from Francis Fukuyama's "The End of History", and later from John Horgan's "The End of Science?", it is not a good idea to talk about the end of anything, I guess. But, "the end of X" always works as an attractive title though, as this piece from the Financial Times shows. But, don't be fooled by the title--some pretty neat observations there. A few excerpts:
Europe is headed towards the end of laisser faire capitalism. Nicolas Sarkozy is only the latest leader to toll the bell on principles that have delivered, over the past 30 years, unparallelled global prosperity – and now a tremendous bust. “The all-powerful market which is always right is finished,” said Mr Sarkozy. Even Hank Paulson, former Goldman Sachs boss, has said “raw capitalism is a dead end”.
Before everyone dons Mao suits, however, it is not clear how raw that capitalism really was. The economic freedoms of the recent past were more of a tremendous party than a defendable principle, fuelled by cheap credit and state support.

That cheap credit and extensive state support is what has come back to bite us big time. I can imagine that the left will use this to bolster their argument that more state intervention (regulation) is needed, and the right will argue that too much of state intervention was why the markets got it so wrong. I tell you, ne'er the twain shall meet!

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