Nah, not as long as the jesuit economists and their alcolytes in the business press can still filibuster us to death with ahistorical technojargon, right? During the next couple decades of re-regulation we can look forward to the remaining true-believers whine about the misapplication of "sound market principles" or failure to "go all the way" as the explanation for the current crisis (their IMF clergy members will have had plenty of practice from South America) on the one hand. On the other we can expect to hear how reregulation is doomed to failure and totalitarianism is right around the corner. Your dustbin awaits fellas, filed right next to "the end of history".
Unhappily, as a result of the failure of their misguided doctrines the next phase of global capitalism is likely to have a strong authoritarian flavor. Don't think the American technocrats watching the Chinese Olympics weren't wondering "what the hell's so great about democracy anyway?"
I suspect that we'll arrive at rather more prosaic remedies to the regulatory shortfalls that have given rise to the present crisis.
At the end of the day, imperfect as it may be, there's no mechanism other than prices that enables the coordination of supply and demand, and the allocation of capital in a way that responds to the prerogatives of reality than the price system. You can slap a new body on the engine and tweak the controls, but nothing else will work. Reality is too complicated, and the future too uncertain for a centralized bureaucratic mechanism to do anything but fail.
This should be obvious by now, even to people who take Naomi Klein seriously.
Not exactly the fire and brimstone sermon we used to hear from your pulpit. But then again, I can imagine even the most ardent worshippers have been chastened by what people just like Naomi Klein have been warning about for years (The potential collapse of Fannie and Freddie were topics for discussion in my grad seminars more than 5 years ago). Anyway, if not Klein how about Stiglitz?
