I keep a weblog like it's still the 90s. For commentary and dissent please visit jontaylor.ca, or various other purveyors of thought online.

Friday, October 30, 2009

Soros Launches Effort to Battle Free-Market Zeal

Soros Launches Effort to Battle Free-Market Zeal | Newsweek Voices - Michael Hirsh | Newsweek.com: "Now 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, and to correct the failures of decades of market deregulation. Soros hopes matching funds will bring the total endowment up to $200 million. 'Economics has failed not only to predict and explain what happened but has also failed to protect society,' says Robert Johnson, a former managing director at Soros Fund Management, who will direct the new institute. 'That's what the crisis revealed. The paradigm has failed. There is no guidance.'"

I believe the guidance that Soros would give us would be his own. I'd personally rather fail on my own, than have a hand pick cabal of Soros "economists" plot a successful path for me.

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