From his 3/19 column on the spreading subprime catastrophe and who is to blame:
"Since a lot of nonsense and financially self-interested ideological spin will be written and said in the months and years to come it is important â from the beginning â to be clear about who is at fault for this utter housing and financial disaster. The answer is clear: the blame lies with free market zealot and fanatics and voodoo economics ideologues who captured US economic policy in the last six years in the same way in which a bunch of neo-cons high-jacked US foreign policy to bring âdemocracyâ to the Middle East while instead leading the country into the Iraq and Mid-East quagmire and now disaster.
According to these ideologues â listen for example Larry Kudlow extolling every evening on CNBC the virtue of unregulated wild-west cowboy capitalism - government is always utter evil and the economy could never have a financial or economic crisis if taxes are low, government spending is minimal and government intervention and regulation of the economy and of financial systems is inexistent. This nonsense about bubbles, financial crises and recessions being impossible unless the government over-regulates the economy and/or makes monetary policy mistakes is the main religious dogma of this cabal, an axis of ideological zealotry that goes from the WSJ editorial page to a gang of voodoo economic hacks and to some segments of the financial television.
The truth is the contrary: unregulated free market capitalism that has no sensible rules, regulation and supervision and sensible countercyclical monetary and fiscal policies of financial markets leads to credit and asset bubbles, financial excesses and economic and financial crashes. Economic and financial booms and busts were much more severe in the US in the 19th when there was no central bank and no welfare state fiscal actor trying to fine tune the economic business cycle. And business cycle swings have become less frequent since Keynesian countercyclical use of monetary and fiscal policy has been introduced from the Great Depression on."
http://www.rgemonitor.com/blog/roubini/
"Since a lot of nonsense and financially self-interested ideological spin will be written and said in the months and years to come it is important â from the beginning â to be clear about who is at fault for this utter housing and financial disaster. The answer is clear: the blame lies with free market zealot and fanatics and voodoo economics ideologues who captured US economic policy in the last six years in the same way in which a bunch of neo-cons high-jacked US foreign policy to bring âdemocracyâ to the Middle East while instead leading the country into the Iraq and Mid-East quagmire and now disaster.
According to these ideologues â listen for example Larry Kudlow extolling every evening on CNBC the virtue of unregulated wild-west cowboy capitalism - government is always utter evil and the economy could never have a financial or economic crisis if taxes are low, government spending is minimal and government intervention and regulation of the economy and of financial systems is inexistent. This nonsense about bubbles, financial crises and recessions being impossible unless the government over-regulates the economy and/or makes monetary policy mistakes is the main religious dogma of this cabal, an axis of ideological zealotry that goes from the WSJ editorial page to a gang of voodoo economic hacks and to some segments of the financial television.
The truth is the contrary: unregulated free market capitalism that has no sensible rules, regulation and supervision and sensible countercyclical monetary and fiscal policies of financial markets leads to credit and asset bubbles, financial excesses and economic and financial crashes. Economic and financial booms and busts were much more severe in the US in the 19th when there was no central bank and no welfare state fiscal actor trying to fine tune the economic business cycle. And business cycle swings have become less frequent since Keynesian countercyclical use of monetary and fiscal policy has been introduced from the Great Depression on."
http://www.rgemonitor.com/blog/roubini/