My journey back yesterday from the Royal Economic Society annual conference in Manchester was delayed for ages because some poor soul had thrown themselves under a train along the line. At least I managed to finish [amazon_link id=”0674725654″ target=”_blank” ]The Rise and Fall of Neoliberal Capitalism[/amazon_link] by David Kotz.

[amazon_image id=”B00SR5FNSY” link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The Rise and Fall of Neoliberal Capitalism[/amazon_image]

I’m a bit allergic to the word ‘neoliberal’, probably because it’s so often used as generic and blanket abuse of (among other things) all of economics. I’ve been accused of neoliberalism myself (to which the only sensible response is that the accuser needs to get out more if they think I’m an ideologue…..)

Certainly Kotz signals his own ideological views by using the term as his descriptor of American capitalism, but he does have a far more precise and meaningful definition than is the norm. He defines it as a specific “social structure of accumulation”, a “particular configuration of economic and political institutions, as well as dominant economic theories and ideas.” This is interesting, and I buy the general approach – it’s similar to (for example) Michael Best’s use of the concept of “production systems” in [amazon_link id=”0198297459″ target=”_blank” ]The New Competitive Advantage[/amazon_link], but ranging wider beyond the economic institutions of production.

Kotz sees the 1950s and 60s as a golden age of ‘regulated capitalism’ with strong unions and well-paid jobs for (male) breadwinners. He accepts that it had its own crisis, with sustained declines in profitability through the 1970s. Hence the scope for the arrival of ‘neoliberal capitalism’ from 1979/81 with Thatcher and Reagan.

Much of the book describes the development of the ‘neoliberal’ system after that turning point in terms of the broad outlines of the US economy – profit rates and shares, declining union membership, stagnant median real wages, the rise in household indebtedness etc. It does not cover globalisation to any great extent, which seems an important omission, nor does it mention technology or environmental sustainability at all, so the prism is quite narrow. Deindustrialisation is described more in terms of an attack on organised labour than the consequence of several deeper economic trends. However, the book’s analysis of the 2008 crisis in terms of the preceding financial bubble, and the way consumption was supported by debt, is surely not controversial.

Kotz does mention the role of ideas in economic theory and – more important in the long term – political received wisdom (the theory has moved on, but the policy world view far less so). He describes neoliberal ideology as “very strong” – clear, simple, apparently logical. Daniel Stedman-Jones’s [amazon_link id=”B00RWOZWD2″ target=”_blank” ]Masters of the Universe[/amazon_link] gives a much fuller account of the effort it took to cement the ideology over a number of decades prior to 1979, and highlights how much organisation it will take to change the prevailing world view. For I think this is a question of political and social organisation more than one of economic or political theorising.

Kotz argues here that the US and by extension the western economic system is in a state of crisis that will give way to a new “social structure of accumulation” whose shape is yet to be determined – it could be a revived neoliberal system. It will not be his preferred socialist system without a broad social movement, as at moments of crisis in the past such as 1945.

I would agree with Kotz that the prevailing production system or social structure is in crisis, but would emphasise more the fundamental role of technology and globalization. Not that a class-based perspective isn’t important. He concludes: “The path that will be followed in the years ahead cannot be predicted …. The economic changes – or lack of changes – that lie ahead will be the outcome of struggles among various groups and classes in the coming years, which will occur in the realm of ideas, politics and culture.” And surely the realm of the work place, public space and policy corridors too?

So all in all, I agreed with quite a lot of the analysis here while thinking it an incomplete picture. Still, the book irked me, no doubt because of my allergy to ‘neoliberalism’, along with its slightly plodding style. Reading it did feel a bit like being in a political meeting where you are washed over by a wave of abstract nouns. I know economists are on average pretty clunky writers so one should be used to it, but I did nod off over the book as my train trundled veeeery slowly through the countryside.

I wonder what Professor Kotz would have thought of the arrangement at dinner at the Royal Economic Society conference. There were two options for each course, and staff served each one to alternating places at the table. If you preferred the other, you had to exchange. Perfectly efficient and logical – surely only an economist could have thought of it? I’m tempted to do this every time I invite people round for a meal in future, unless that would be a bit neoliberal.

Instructions at the bottom – side payments not ruled out.

Fans of his columns in the Financial Times will know there’s no danger of finishing reading a whole book by Martin Wolf in an optimistic frame of mind. So it is with his new book, [amazon_link id=”1846146976″ target=”_blank” ]The Shifts and The Shocks[/amazon_link]. The subtitle is ‘What we’ve learned – and still have to learn – from the financial crisis’, and the message of the book is that there is more still needing to be done than sorted out already.

[amazon_image id=”1846146976″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The Shifts and the Shocks: What we’ve learned – and have still to learn – from the financial crisis[/amazon_image]

The main thing the book argues has been learned (by some people) since the crisis is that pre-crisis ‘official’ macroeconomics comprehensively failed. To echo the title of the relevant chapter, orthodoxy has been overthrown. Props to Wolf for acknowledging his own change of mind in the light of events (after all, he wrote an earlier book called [amazon_link id=”0300102526″ target=”_blank” ]Why Globalization Works[/amazon_link].) He points out that the features of the global economy that turned out to matter in real life – the accumulation of debt and the growth of shadow banking – had been assumed to be unimportant or irrelevant. Wolf has become a wholehearted [amazon_link id=”0071592997″ target=”_blank” ]Minskian[/amazon_link], but you obviously don’t need to jump into any new camp to agree that pre-crisis dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models were a nonsense. What’s rather depressing is that some macroeconomists still seem to think these DSGE models just need a bit of tinkering, a little bit of financial ‘friction’ adding in. As the book’s introduction forcefully points out, a theory in which something that did happen is impossible is a rubbish theory.

The first chunk of the book is a high-level description and an analysis of the origins and unfolding of the financial crisis, with particular emphasis on the Eurozone. He has long been writing in his Financial Times columns about the problem global imbalances, particularly between the US and China. This book focuses more on Europe. Much of the description is familiar territory, but seen this time through Wolf’s new spectacles of the Minsky convert.This section culminates in the ‘orthodoxy overthrown’ chapter, which includes a quick rundown of the various alternatives, in a nice, brief summary of the history of macroeconomic thought including those turned into renegades by the DSGE triumphalists of the 1990s and 2000s. Wolf ends by concluding that in a system in which the state is the ultimate supplier of money but most money and credit in use is created by the private sector is a ‘pact with the devil’. “Moreover, the liberalization of finance seems to lead to crises almost automatically. Surely this suggests the need for a new kind of system.”

So what might a new system look like? To fix finance, he advocates – following Anat Admati and Martin Hellwig’s outstanding [amazon_link id=”0691162387″ target=”_blank” ]The Bankers’ New Clothes[/amazon_link] – a much higher equity ratio for banks, maybe 20%, and serious macro-prudential tools. These seem such no-brainers that the real question is why regulators are so hesitant about them – but this takes us into the analysis of power in the western economies. A chapter on the Eurozone concludes that it isn’t working but it isn’t clear either how to turn it into a ‘good marriage’. This chapter is surprisingly diffident – Wolf writes: “Germany’s insistence on retaining its huge external surplus, on keeping inflation so low, on national responsibility for bank debts and on ever tighter fiscal discipline will not work. The Eurozone needs to become something different.” I would have expected him to predict the unlikeliness of this happening – although he does also acknowledge how messy a divorce would be.

The final chapter has a key point: “Unless regulation and the supply of fiscal backstops is to be much more global, finance should be far less so.” Little would be lost by decreasing the global integration of banking, he argues. Wolf is more radical than what he describes as the ‘new orthodoxy’, which aims to preserve the globally integrated financial system through incremental reform – and, I would say, keeping fingers tightly crossed.This section echoes the chapter in Ian Goldin’s [amazon_link id=”0691154708″ target=”_blank” ]The Butterfly Defect[/amazon_link], which underlines the inherent risks in the complex, integrated financial network.

Wolf argues that western elites are continuing to let people down, to a dangerous degree. He accuses them of ‘three huge failures’ – misunderstanding the consequences of financial liberalization and fantasizing about the self-stabilizing features of finance; ignoring the consequences of the emergence of a plutocratic global elite for the civic glue that enables democracy to function; and turning what should have remained a mundane common currency or currency management plan in the EU into a German currency administered by unaccountable ECB and Commission officials without channels of accountability to other Eurozone countries and citizens.

If we cannot implement radical changes – more radical than most people recognize, Wolf says – then, well he doesn’t explicitly spell it out, but implies, economic and political disaster.

By and large, I agree. There’s no point just tinkering with a fundamentally broken system. There are some questions not covered in the book that would only add to the gloom. For example, the extent of outstanding debt left over from the crisis is ginormous. Without a growth miracle – no sign of that on the horizon – the options are explicit or implicit default. How will that happen? The large international banks have returned to pre-crisis behaviours with only marginally more capital – and are still being allowed to judge their own riskiness! What happens when a modest decline in some market somewhere sets us off on the downward spiral of liquidity and solvency we saw in 2008, but this time without any fiscal or monetary firepower left? And by the way, what about demographic and environmental challenges?

[amazon_link id=”1846146976″ target=”_blank” ]The Shifts and the Shocks[/amazon_link] is a dense and chunky book about economics, not a manifesto for the Occupy movement. I can’t quite picture Martin Wolf in a Guy Fawkes mask outside the ECB. Still, he makes a good case that the ‘new orthodoxy’ of minor reforms favoured by global finance is madness. Radicalism is the only sanity.