The Nobel committee can stop looking for next year winner of the Nobel prize in economics and hand the thing right now to Harold Myerson. The WaPo columnist's effort of today, Gods That Failed, is Krugmanesque, reading like an extended gloat at the expense of believers in free markets. Ha-ha, mocks Myerson, your god of unregulated capitalism is dead. Just like Communism failed, so has your system. You half expect Myerson to end with a self-satisfied "nah nah nah nah nah!"From Myerson's opening paras [emphasis added]:
In 1949, a number of famous writers, among them Arthur Koestler, André Gide, Richard Wright, Stephen Spender and Ignazio Silone, wrote essays explaining why they were no longer communists. The essays were collected in a volume entitled "The God That Failed."There's just one small problem with Harold's hypothesis: it's based on an entirely false premise, one that I'm sure NB readers will quickly spot. The current mess was caused not by too little government regulation, but too much.
Today, conservative intellectuals might want to consider writing a tome on the failure of their own beloved deity, unregulated capitalism.
