At some stage it will be necessary to look beyond bail-outs and emergency packages and ask what kind of capitalism should emerge after the present crisis. More is at stake than the nitty-gritty of bank regulation.
To start with, “market fundamentalism”, which had no real existence outside North America, is now well and truly dead. Let us take two sayings that embody it.
First there is the rhetorical question: “What should you do if you found a $100 bill on the street?” The Chicago answer is supposed to be: “You wouldn't. Somebody would have picked up the bill long ago.” The response presupposes a combination of extreme rationality and extreme selfishness, which does not always prevail.