The Death of Neo-Liberalism (was Re: Sebastian Edwards)

[Brad De Long]

Re: Eric Hobsbawm's
>
>
>The global economy is indeed here to stay. But three things about it must
>be said.
>
>1) Its operation and its further progress are not identical with the policy
>of extreme laissez-faire. This does not achieve the world-wide optimal
>growth of goods and services and it certainly does not within any finite
>period of time produce the most efficient allocation of resources in the
>real world...
>
>2) The actors in the global market can no more function smoothly without
>non-market institutions than the national market. At the very least they
>require the equivalent of a system of law with sanctions to guarantee the
>performance of contracts and, more to the point, outside regulation very
>notably of financial markets. The transnational economy is indeed trying to
>create such institutions, but in doing so it utilises - it must utilise -
>the only source of effective law and outside regulation there is, namely
>the political power of states or supranational institutions operated by or
>by permission of states, singly or collectively...
>
>3) The power of states over what happens on their territories may have
>decreased since, after two centuries of growth, it reached its peak after
>the second world war. Nevertheless their powers of control over the economy
>on their territory remain substantial, at least in the 23 large states
>which contain 70 per cent of the human race and the 10 states which contain
>three-quarters of the global GDP. In the short tun the collective power of
>the political authorities representing the three major economic blocs - the
>USA, the European Union and Japan - remains decisive...

Funny.

I remember a Clinton administration National Economic Council meeting in
1994 in which the first point was made by Labor Secretary Reich and CEA
Chair Tyson, the second point by Treasury Undersecretary Summers and
Treasury Secretary Bentsen, and the third point by Treasury Deputy
Secretary Altman and Commerce Secretary Brown.

This is supposed to be a critique of "neoliberalism"?

Brad DeLong