Economic Crisis!

Someone asked me earlier, where is the theory in all this? In many ways the free market, neo-liberal, laissez faire doctrines could easily be blamed for the current crisis. However the problem with this is that those doctrines are based on a true system of free markets with minimum state intervention. It relies on a model of the perfectly informed, self interested man being able to act perfectly logically in every transaction he ever makes. Of course this is not the case and is as ludicrous an idea as that of a centrally planned socialist system. Unfortunately this doctrine has been hugely influential (a large part of that because it held the blinding trump card of having 'defeated' socialism and was therefore the only method of social organisation left known to man - thanks Fukuyama!)So we have neo-liberally informed policy makers (as a default setting having in general been educated in elitist western systems) making everyone believe that spending as much as possible is a virtue as this will keep the economy going (and trickle down theory of course meaning those sweatshop workers will one day be better off). This behaviour ends people (not to mention the environment, flora and fauna) up in huge amounts of debt that the banks are happy to finance due to the immense amount of profit there is possible to make...then suddenly, oh dear, we've all incurred a load of bad debt, this wasn't supposed to happen!....er, Big Brother Nation, any chance you could help us out!? And of course the nation has to capitulate because otherwise the system (the basis of its authority) would disintegrate. This dirty mixture of the idea of freedom (American imperialism anyone?) mixed with a deceptively intrusive and regulatory state has got us into this mess in the first place. If markets were a lot less de-regulated much of these problems would be allievated, and states could became much more pro-active in providing equal starting chances to all (education, social security, basic healthcare) At the moment the EU trading blocks, CAP, TRIPPS, TRIMMS, tarriffs and all the other rediculous trade infringements are root causes of the problems we see at the moment. If markets were truly freed up we would see many more independent financial institutions being developed that could give consumers a choice (as in whether they want their money to be gambled for a chance of income or whether they just want a safe place to deposit money - the original idea of a bank!) That way if greedy investors want to earn millions of pounds, they would have to do it with people who have agreed to it, and not force debts onto inniocent tax payers!