Government role gets rethink

摘要

It's five years from the first stutterings that turned into the global financial crisis - time enough for governments to have stopped treating symptoms and hoping for the best. The world is not going back to old business-as-usual. Some think it is time to rethink how governments operate. After the 1929 crash and subsequent depression, governments took to planning, which gave us social security and the mixed economy. After the 1973 oil crisis and collapse of the BrettonrnWoods system, governments ditched planning as futile in favour of "more-market" economies which were assumed to tend always to equilibrium.