Friday, October 30, 2009

Soros Launches Effort to Battle Free-Market Zeal | Newsweek Voices - Michael Hirsh | Newsweek.com

Soros Launches Effort to Battle Free-Market Zeal | Newsweek Voices - Michael Hirsh | Newsweek.com:
"...financier George Soros is announcing a $50 million effort to speed things along. This week Soros is gathering some of the leading practitioners of the market-skeptic school, who were marginalized during the era of 'free-market fundamentalism,' among them Nobelists Joseph Stiglitz, George Akerlof, Michael Spence, and Sir James Mirrlees. He's also creating an 'Institute for New Economic Thinking' to make research grants, convene symposiums, and establish a journal, all in an effort to take back the economics profession from the champions of free-market zealotry who have dominated it for decades"

First of all I love the sentence "...those marginalized....include Nobelists Joseph Stiglitz, George Akerlof, Michael Spence, and Sir James Mirrlees" Marginalized nobelists. Great! LOL.


But seriously, Soros has yet to convince me.

Do we need regulation? Yes. Free markets are not perfect and people do have an incentive to hide the truth, to create information asymmetries. However too much regulation and intervention is worse than too little. A free market system where people can take chances will win out over a centrally controlled system where who you know matters more than what you know.

Sure any free system will have painful excesses and bubbles, but these problems, as painful in the short run as they may be, must be weighed against the corruption and politics of any regulatory system. I am confident that if a proper accounting is done, the advantage will lie closer to the free market camp than the so called new economists believe.

George Soros, your success has earned you the right to say what you want and I respect your ideas, but in this case, I think history will show that you are on the wrong side of the market on this one.

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