É isto
The dominant theoretical paradigm holds that a financial crisis cannot happen and cannot matter if it does happen, at least provided broad money is not allowed to collapse. In this view, the only things now holding economies back are structural rigidities and policy-induced uncertainties. This is, in my view, a fairy story, based on theories that reduce capitalism to a barter economy under a thin monetary veil.
Far more persuasive, to me, are views that accept that people make important mistakes. The big divide is between those – the Austrians – who hold that the mistakes are made by governments while the solution is to let the distorted financial edifice collapse and those – the post-Keynesians – who hold that a modern economy is inherently unstable, while letting it collapse would take us back to the 1930s. I am decidedly in the latter camp.
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The high-income countries have been running a series of fascinating experiments. One was with financial sector deregulation and housing-led growth. It failed. Another was with a strongly interventionist response to the financial crisis of 2008. It worked, more or less. Yet another is with post-crisis deleveraging and a return to more normal fiscal and monetary settings. The jury is out on this effort. In the eurozone, however, this shift to fiscal austerity is running alongside a still bigger experiment: the construction of a currency union around a structurally mercantilist core among countries with negligible fiscal solidarity, fragile banking systems, inflexible economies and divergent competitiveness. Good luck for 2012. Everybody will need it.
Martin Wolf, The 2012 Recovery Handle With Care
