Financial Crisis, Free Markets and State Intervention

It's the illusion that the state somehow stands apart from capitalism, is not part of capitalism; it stands outside of it. It's all this misunderstanding when we speak of states versus markets. These markets are full of power, asymmetric power, very unequal power, and those power is founded on the backing that states give them. The free markets that we know have been made by very active state intervention, and people enter into market activities knowing that states will back up property in those markets. So it's an illusion to think that states are something other than capitalism. When you understand American capitalism, you understand the state is part of it. Federal Reserve and Wall Street, right, need to be seen as part of a whole—sure, in which the Federal Reserve is not acting as a competitor inside the market; it's acting as an overseer of it; more or less regulation in different periods, it's true, but it's an overseer of it.

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