He also says:

The objective is also clear: to preserve an open and at least reasonably stable world economy that offers opportunity to as much of humanity as possible. We have done a disturbingly poor job of this in recent years. We must do better. We can do so, provided we approach the task in a spirit of humility and pragmatism, shorn of ideological blinkers.

Would it be unfair of me to snicker at this point?

Capitalism has already failed before?

Ad astra per aspera

in an earlier thread: here

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

Save Capitalism From Itself, Part XVIII.

That Wolf thinks this is not ideological, or that "to preserve as much liberty as possible, while recognising that the minimum state was unacceptable to a democratic society" is not a moral position, is just ridiculous.

*Traitor*, n.
A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.

There seem to be a lot economists around here. I'm not one of them. Has anyone an opinion about the video by Paul Grignon on YouTube 'Money as Debt'? I still can't understand how debt creates 'wealth'. But that's me: hopelessly wealthless.

Paul Krugman - Fighting Off Depression - NYTimes.com

We weren't supposed to find ourselves in this situation. For many years most economists believed that preventing another Great Depression would be easy. In 2003, Robert Lucas of the University of Chicago, in his presidential address to the American Economic Association, declared that the "central problem of depression-prevention has been solved, for all practical purposes, and has in fact been solved for many decades."

Milton Friedman, in particular, persuaded many economists that the Federal Reserve could have stopped the Depression in its tracks simply by providing banks with more liquidity, which would have prevented a sharp fall in the money supply. Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, famously apologized to Friedman on his institution's behalf: "You're right. We did it. We're very sorry. But thanks to you, we won't do it again."

It turns out, however, that preventing depressions isn't that easy after all. Under Mr. Bernanke's leadership, the Fed has been supplying liquidity like an engine crew trying to put out a five-alarm fire, and the money supply has been rising rapidly. Yet credit remains scarce, and the economy is still in free fall.

Friedman's claim that monetary policy could have prevented the Great Depression was an attempt to refute the analysis of John Maynard Keynes, who argued that monetary policy is ineffective under depression conditions and that fiscal policy -- large-scale deficit spending by the government -- is needed to fight mass unemployment. The failure of monetary policy in the current crisis shows that Keynes had it right the first time. And Keynesian thinking lies behind Mr. Obama's plans to rescue the economy.

"Ce qui vient au monde pour ne rien troubler ne mérite ni égards ni patience." René Char

NBBooks had a comment on one of Jerome's diaries on DKos the other day that illuminates the nature of Anglo Disease finance a century and a half ago, complete with some very pertinent quotes from the original Bagehot.  Several people noted that it was more than a comment and urged him to revise it to a diary and cross post here and elsewhere.  Sometimes things stand revealed more starkly at the beginning and probably there was less need for obfuscation 150 years ago.

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."