Nicolas Sarkozy arrived at the Group of 20 summit having said: “The all-powerful market that is always right is finished.” The French president left it proclaiming that “a page has been turned” on the Anglo-Saxon financial model. Whether or not the page has really been turned depends on the construction of a practical successor to free-market economics, a process that entrenched interests in America and Britain would be well-advised to encourage if they wish to remain centre stage.
The ideas that defined the golden age of market capitalism were formed in the vacuum left by the collapse of the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates in 1971. Over the next two decades, the Chicago School of free-market economists helped to persuade the Reagan and Thatcher administrations to adopt laisser faire policies and deregulation. Simultaneously, at Northwestern University, Professor Alfred Rappaport's work on creating shareholder value clarified the objectives of the corporate sector.
Management consultants took hold of these ideas and converted them to a coherent strategy for business. Then investment bankers, liberated by deregulation and with an eye to the main chance, picked up the whole package and sold it hard to chief executives. Once developments in derivatives theory in the 1970s opened the door to share options and performance-based compensation for executives, there followed three decades in which tooth-and-claw capitalism ruled supreme.
