Nineteen - How Should Society Regulate Capitalism?

Summary

Are competitive markets self-regulating or are they overwhelmed by market power? In the case of corporations, market power takes the form of monopolies. In the case of financial markets, it takes the form of the herd behavior of investors. As illustrated by the following quotation from the Financial Times (2009c), the 2008–2009 recession prompted a change in the intellectual climate in favor the latter market-disorder view:

The onset of the worst global recession since the 1930s has led many to suppose the era of liberal economics and light-touch financial regulation ushered in by Thatcher and Ronald Reagan is over. Failures of untrammeled capitalism are blamed for the crisis. Discredited “socialist” solutions are back: banks are nationalized or rescued with taxpayers’ funds; borrowed money is pumped into economies in a Keynesian effort to boost demand.

How should society regulate capitalism, and, as a by-product, what role should the central bank play? During the 2008–2009 recession, the United States returned to the popular ethos that existed in the Great Depression and in the Great Inflation. Namely, popular discourse held that private markets failed to discipline the self-interest of individuals in a way that causes that self-interest to redound to the public interest. Belief in the self-interest of individuals coordinated by the price system ceded before a belief in the greed of powerful players.