The Non-Existent Hand

“While most of the blame for the crisis should reside with those in the financial markets … a considerable portion of it lies with the economics profession,” writes Joseph Stiglitz. “The notion economists pushed—that markets are efficient and self-adjusting—gave comfort to regulators like Alan Greenspan, who didn’t believe in regulation in the first place. They provided support for the movement which stripped away the regulations that had provided the basis of financial stability in the decades after the Great Depression; and they gave justification to those … who opposed doing anything about derivatives.”