Opinion from INET Hong Kong: Laissez Failure

Lord Adair Turner: from laissez faire to laissez failure

by Dirk Ehnts, Econoblog101

The INET (Institute for New Economic Thinking) Hong Kong conference is on, and Lord Adair Turner, now a senior fellow at INET, gave the dinner speech. Due to a Freudian slip in my hearing I came up with the title, which is not what he actually said. There was something in the speech about a “lesser failure”, but the title quite nicely summarizes the speech. Turner traces the ideas of the old guard of economists from the 1930s and their understanding of money and banking. It is a very good summary and makes one wonder why Lord Turner is not head of the Bank of England.

Slides and full paper are available here.  This is an in depth look at remarks made previously by Turner regarding the use of debt-free money.