A stunningly good article by my Cobden Centre colleague Dr Anthony J Evans which is now being picked up in the blogosphere:
Barack Obama’s speech on Monday to Wall Street outlines an overhaul of the regulatory regime. On the anniversary of the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, politicians from both sides of the Atlantic are looking to remodel capitalism. The thirst for greater regulation is strong, united around Gordon Brown’s judgment that “laissez-faire has had its day … the old idea that the markets were efficient and could work themselves out by themselves are gone”.
The notion that the present financial system is “laissez-faire” is, of course, ludicrous. At present, we have a nationalised organisation that holds a state-granted monopoly on the issuance of currency. If this were any industry other than finance, the Bank of England would be seen as the Soviet-style planning board that it is.
Defending laissez-faire is therefore not a defence of the status quo; it is a positive prescription for a totally new regime.
Read the rest of the article: Don’t regulate banking – liberalise it.
Further reading here: Insight.
