“The study of money, above all other fields in economics, is one in which complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade truth, not to reveal it”*…
As you grow up and experience more of the ups and downs of the economy, you will notice a piece of mindbending hypocrisy: during the good times, bankers, entrepreneurs—rich people in general—tend to be against government. They criticize it as a “brake on development,” a “parasite” feeding on the private sector through taxation, an “enemy of freedom and entrepreneurship.” The cleverer among them even go so far as to deny that government has any moral right, or duty, to serve society, by claiming that “there is no such thing as society—there are just individuals and families,” or “society is not well defined enough for the state to be able to serve it.” And yet, when a crash occurs that is brought on by their actions, those who have delivered the fieriest of speeches vehemently opposing substantial government intervention in the economy suddenly demand the state’s aid. “Where is the government when we need it?” they yelp.
This is not a new contradiction[**]…
Yannis Varoufakis, the motorcycle-riding economist who served as Greece’s Minister of Finance through the depths of their recent financial crisis, offers some plain speaking on economics in general and banking in particular: “A letter to my daughter about the black magic of banking.”
See also this.
* John Kenneth Galbraith, Money: Whence it came, where it went
** Indeed: “Since those who rule in the city do so because they own a lot, I suppose they’re unwilling to enact laws to prevent young people who’ve had no discipline from spending and wasting their wealth, so that by making loans to them, secured by the young people’s property, and then calling those loans in, they themselves become even richer and more honored.” – Plato, The Republic
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As we contemplate capital, we might send neoliberal birthday greetings to Maurice Félix Charles Allais; he was born on this date in 1911. He won the 1988 Nobel Prize in Economics “for his pioneering contributions to the theory of markets and efficient utilization of resources.” Indeed, the Nobel Committee suggested that Allais might be considered (with Paul Samuelson and John Hicks) ” the principal architect of the neoclassical synthesis” (in large measure because they formalized the notion of self-regulating markets).
Samuelson said “had Allais earliest writings been in English, a generation of economic theory would have taken a different course” and the Nobel Prize should have been awarded to him much earlier. John Maynard Keynes, whose ideas the trio very selectively used, thought that Allais and the emerging neo-liberal idea were dangerously wrong.
