How Markets Fail : The Logic Of Economic Calamities, By John Cassidy Essay
2209 Words9 Pages
In How Markets Fail: the Logic of Economic Calamities, the author, John Cassidy, details the growth of the free market ideology. This ideology, he argues, has become an over idealized utopian notion of a self-regulating market has been expanded upon over decades to become common rhetoric that influenced policy. This driving theory became accepted into global, but specifically the American context, and led to the financial collapse of 2008 due to lax policies which encouraged risky behaviour in the belief the market would simply sort itself out, which in the end it did not. Cassidy argues that the self-regulating market in essence is a fallacy and the solution to prevent further market failures can only be obtained through a hybrid of free-market and government supervision. Cassidy effectively argues his point by detailing the historical development of the self market theory which provides a framework to later explain the market failure of 2008. Convincingly, he argues that there should be a focus on rational economics which have existed for decades but have been pushed aside in favour of the utopian self regulating market.
From the beginning of his book Cassidy comes to the conclusion that the financial collapse of 2008 was not an inescapable fate. Rather, it was the result of the general ignorance of warning signs from leading economists and Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve for the United States, which resulted in the collapse due to their
sub-prime market was over 10% whilst the prime market was around 2%. The price decrease in real estate lead to banks not being able even to recover the amount they invested.
When the speculative subprime market went into crisis it only began much bigger recession. Behind the sub-prime there was another crisis - the financial innovation products: CDO 's, CDS 's, derivatives, futures market, which were directly interlocked with sub-prime loans. Creation of a secondary «shadow market» with no