What caused Britain's and the USA's financial crash? What is its legacy? How to deal with the consequences? David Potter, who built the global, hi-tech company Psion, and then served on the Bank of England when the crash began, addresses these questions with the exceptional authority of a businessman amongst economists. 

Game theory or gift society? The narcissistic vision of the homo oeconomicus has failed to acknowledge long-documented evidence of the primacy of cooperation. In this Friday essay, Adrian Pabst explores the liberating potential of an anthropologically informed economics for the age of austerity. 

The call for a return to an ‘active industrial policy’ has failed to present a modern challenge to finance capitalism. For this argument to ring true in the 21st century, it must first consider with what type of knowledge it is now engaged. How can policy itself escape the pitfalls of nostalgia, lobbying and the bailout mentality? 

The ascendancy of the financial markets which developed in the 1980s must be put into reverse.  The genie must be put back in the bottle. A Keynesian ‘euthanasia of the rentier’ is now essential for both growth and democracy.

The financial crisis demonstrated extraordinary failures on the part of policy elites and economic experts. And yet we remain governed by technocrats. We need to re-politicise economic policy-making, or else repeat the mistakes of the past.

A prevalent characteristic of financial discourse in the UK and beyond is the polarisation of a creative entrepreneurial culture with a rebellious left-wing.  Brett Scott deconstructs this opposition, finding in the emergent space a hybrid radical – well versed in the pragmatics of microeconomics while embracing the deviant spirit of ‘critical theory’.