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The Guardian - Culture Edit Unfollow Free Market: The History of an Idea by Jacob Soll review by Felix Martin Sep 30, 2022 This rich history of economic thought shows that the concept of completely unfettered trade is an extremely recent invention Strange things are afoot in the world of economic policy these days. Liz Truss is, by her own account, Margaret Thatcher’s biggest admirer and a fanatical devotee of economic liberalisation. Yet the first act of the new prime minister was to announce the largest government intervention in UK history: a price cap for retail energy markets expected to cost the Treasury more than the entire NHS budget. It is not an isolated case. The flagship fiscal policy of Truss’s predecessor – “levelling up” – was essentially an admission that free markets cannot be left to their own devices in allocating investment across regions. In the world of money and finance, the era of quantitative easing has effectively nationalised large parts of the world’s major bond markets. Internationally, the US has morphed into the world’s leading protectionist power – while communist China is toasted in Davos as the last great champion of free trade. Forget strange things – it’s more like Stranger Things, and global economic policy seems to have stumbled into the Upside Down. Continue reading... Continue Reading

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