This is a good time to ask what is left of an outlook known to its enemies as neoliberalism and by at least some of its friends as just economic liberalism. One cannot be too careful in choice of wording. For neoliberalism was originally the self-chosen name for a group formed just before the second world war around the US commentator Walter Lippmann and which advocated, among other things, making greater use of market forces in economic policy. It has only more recently acquired pejorative associations.
Roughly speaking, the quarter century after 1945 was not a promising time for economic liberalism – except perhaps in West Germany where Ludwig Erhard was the guiding spirit of the so-called economic miracle. The tide turned towards economic liberalism in the last quarter of the century, symbolised by the leadership of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. The approach lingered on even after the departure of these charismatic leaders. While Tony Blair and Bill Clinton may have come from a different end of the political spectrum, they made no attempt to reverse course. The traumatic event was of course the financial crisis that broke out in 2007-08 and administered a fatal blow to economic liberalism.
Or did it? As far as normal goods and services are concerned, there is still a great deal to be said for giving a leading role to prices and profits. But for financial markets economic liberalism, at least in the form we have known it, has proved fatally flawed. The tendency of capitalist economies to boom and bust is intimately connected with that failure. As almost every government and central bank is committed to its reform, I would for the present concentrate on other aspects.