Guest column: Joseph E Stiglitz

THE world has not been kind to neo-liberalism, that grab-bag of ideas based on the fundamentalist notion that markets are self-correcting, allocate resources efficiently, and serve the public interest well. It was this market fundamentalism that underlay Thatcherism, Reaganomics, and the so-called "Washington Consensus" in favour of privatisation, liberalisation, and independent central banks focusing single-mindedly on inflation.

Though neo-liberals do not want to admit it, their ideology has failed.

No-one can claim that financial markets did a stellar job in allocating resources in the late 1990s, with 97 per cent of investments in fibre optics taking years to see any li...