The New York Times's Nobel laureate economics columnist, Paul Krugman, has a column today blaming the "ideology" of "free-market fundamentalism" for the financial crisis in America and Ireland. He doesn't deal with the fact that there's also an economic crisis in Greece, which is hardly a bastion of free-market "fundamentalism."
The phrase free-market fundamentalism or some variation on it is being heard increasingly frequently these days, almost always derisively. We've cited at least three other mentions here at FutureOfCapitalism.com: Fund manager and philanthropist George Soros back in November 2009 speaking of "market fundamentalist ideology" as "a false and dangerous doctrine"; HSBC chairman and Church of England minister Stephen Green in his book writing about "the manifest failure of market fundamentalism"; and Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain in September 2009 speaking of the "bankrupt ideology" of free market "fundamentalism."
Most of those denouncing the ideology of market fundamentalism have certain ideologies or fundamental beliefs of their own, often unstated, but nevertheless present. It's worth trying to identify what they are.
Meanwhile, on Mr. Krugman's topic of the day of Ireland, he doesn't deal with either the PIGS Without Jews hypothesis or the Heritage Foundation's explanation that part of the problem in Ireland is a sense by corporations that the European Union views Ireland's low corporate tax rates as a form of unfair competition and will move against them by establishing an EU-wide common tax base.