Markets, Morals and Policy-Making: A New Defence of Free-Market Economics

“I abandoned free market principles to save the free market system.” Those were the words of President George W. Bush during a 2008 interview as he discussed his administration’s economic interventions in the wake of the financial crisis. Indeed, capitalism has come under renewed fire in the wake of the crisis, with politicians and “experts” offering a wide menu of interventions and regulations that they claim will cure the capitalist system’s ills. For the most part, a large majority of the general public supports such interventions and views government as the solution to economic and social problems—for example, business cycles, unemployment, inequality, and poverty. Given the hostility toward capitalism, what is the advocate of free markets to do? This question provides the focus for Enrico Colombatto’s Markets, Morals and Policy-Making.

Read the full article at the Independent Institute.