What is the Volcker rule? The headlines in the press describe a nebulously defined financial regulation as being the second coming of financial reform Yet the only thing clear about the Volcker rule is who it is named after, former Federal Reserve chair Paul Volcker. The Volcker rule was a last minute financial regulation rule in an attempt to stop speculative trading by Wall Street. It has been politicized, lobbied against, delayed, watered down and modified heavily.
We live in an age of bubbles. I suppose that this should come as no surprise.
The Greek roots of the word "economy" are oikos and nomia. The former meaning household, and the latter its management. For most of human history, this has been the purpose of the economy, to provide the means of subsistence by which a people survive. Karl Polanyi, the author of The Great Transformation wrote in the midst of the Second World War about how the market may behave like a type of cancer. Economic activity and the production of profit is seen as an end unto itself, rather than simply the means by which societies produce the means by which they exist. And in doing so it unleashes what Polanyi called the "double movement."
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