Moving beyond market fundamentalism to a more balanced economy

In some ways, just as the fall of the Berlin Wall marked the end of Communism, 15 September 2008, marked the end of market fundamentalism, even though the weaknesses in both systems were evident long before. It

was on 15 September that the American government made clear that it did not believe that markets by themselves worked and that for the American economy to continue, it would take massive governmental interventions of an unprecedented scale, larger in many ways than had even occurred during the Great Depression.

Thus, we have a massive rethinking of the role of the government and of the market. What I want to do is to look at this from a broader, more historical perspective and to end with some comments about the role of the social economy as we move towards the construction of a more balanced economy.