Democracy vs. Finance, Governments vs. Progress

Markets are supposed to create rigor and discipline, to reflect economic reality.  In this standard view,  the public is seen as self-serving and self-deluded about economic reality.  Governments that reflect the wishes of their majorities are almost by definition going to impose inefficient, nostalgic policies suited to a bygone age that discourage their population from adapting to the economic needs of today.  Democratic governments are seen as dangerous for the economy.  This is why "central bank independence," which is seen as the prerequisite to central bank reliability, means independence from both popular desires and from democratic representatives like the U.S. Congress.

Is this how things really work?  The economist Mark Weisbrot has a nice summary of the European crisis that suggests not.  First on markets:

"the markets" can't seem to decide what they want from these governments in order to love them again. Two weeks ago the euro was plummeting because the financial markets wanted more blood: they wanted Greece, Spain, Portugal, and the other currently victimised countries of Europe (Italy and Ireland) to commit to more spending cuts and tax increases. Then they got what they wanted, and within a day or two, the euro started crashing again because "the markets" discovered that these pro-cyclical policies would actually make things worse in the countries that adopted them, and reduce growth in the whole eurozone.

Markets are pushed by investing institutions, which are fairly close to a global monoculture of neoclassical economic orthodoxy.  So austerity is always job 1.  But orthodoxy recognizes contraction and that austerity policies can make contraction worse.  Markets are ruled by an economic orthodoxy that is contradictory and pushes investors in different directions.

Similarly, here's Weisbrot on governments:

Unfortunately the European authorities – especially the European Central Bank – are even worse than the markets. They are less ambivalent and more committed to punishing the weaker economies by having them cut spending even if it causes or deepens recession and mass unemployment (over 20% in Spain).  . . .

There is a class dimension to all of this, with the EU authorities and the bankers united in wanting to balance the books on the backs of the workers – and adopt "labour market reforms" that will weaken labour and redistribute income upward for generations to come. The EU authorities and financiers believe that real wages must fall quite sharply in these countries in order to make them internationally competitive – but the protesters are responding with a fiscal version of "No justice, no peace".

In short, "markets"  change their minds every few days about the necessary medicine because they really have no idea how to develop economies.  Governments are now devoted to de-developing their populations: lower wages is a euphemism for increased poverty.

Economists aren't doing much better, for the most part.  Writing in the Financial Times on June 1, the prescient critic of finance Nouriel Roubini contradictorily calls  for "radical reform of finance" and for Europe to "deregulate" and "liberalise."  And Weisbrot calls for an end to the Euro so that countries like Greece can rebalance by deflating a national currency, rather than calling for EU-based economic re-development.

The only way out is to start by recognizing that markets seek to make money for the people who invest in markets, and do not seek to develop economies. This will help keep governments from catering to them, and impoverishing their populations in the process.  It will also relegitimize popular economic demands, which are in fact closer to developmental wisdom than are the self-serving calculations of investors and the central banks who set things up for them.

Democratic theory presumes the long-term wisdom of the deliberative majority. Finance -- via its economic theorists -- has declared itself to be the great exception to democracy, and remains the area in public life where frankly anti-democratic, elitist  theory flourishes.  It drags public policy in its wake, and in spite of lucid mass hostility to banks, has intimidated and paralyzed the popular reimagination of economics.  This has set up a kind of ancien regime within democracy as such. In the arena of financial capitalism, democracy has been effectively canceled.

Either we democratize finance with a basis in a coordinated retheorization of it or Europe and the US will keeping heading straight the poorhouse.