Publication
Penn State Law Review
Volume
116
Page
1
Year
2011
Abstract
How should we regulate the U.S. financial system after the financial crisis, when we face the task with a radically inadequate understanding of what went wrong and what effect proposed regulations will likely have? This paper explores three quite different approaches to regulating in the face of severe uncertainty: the libertarianism of Friedrich Hayek, the conservatism of Michael Oakeshott, and the liberalism of John Maynard Keynes. Each thought deeply about the problem of how uncertainty affects human affairs, but each came to quite different conclusions about how to address such uncertainty. The paper outlines the core, immensely useful insights of each. It then outlines the even more useful and persuasive critiques that each launches at the other two. From this collision of viewpoints, the paper outlines a hybrid general approach to regulating the financial system which it (rather tongue-in-cheek) labels “cowardly interventions.” This approach accepts the basic insight of Keynes that unregulated financial markets will be deeply unstable, causing periodic destructive depressions. Thus, fairly strong regulation of finance is needed. But following the insights of Hayek and Oakeshott, I argue that new regulations should be cowardly. We should as much as possible heed the wisdom embedded in markets and existing institutions. We should identify as best we can the biggest problems that current markets pose, and address those problems with new rules that are measured, limited, market-friendly, and subject to evaluation and pruning. How should we regulate the U.S. financial system after the financial crisis, when we face the task with a radically inadequate understanding of what went wrong and what effect proposed regulations will likely have? This paper explores three quite different approaches to regulating in the face of severe uncertainty: the libertarianism of Friedrich Hayek, the conservatism of Michael Oakeshott, and the liberalism of John Maynard Keynes. Each thought deeply about the problem of how uncertainty affects human affairs, but each came to quite different conclusions about how to address such uncertainty. The paper outlines the core, immensely useful insights of each. It then outlines the even more useful and persuasive critiques that each launches at the other two. From this collision of viewpoints, the paper outlines a hybrid general approach to regulating the financial system which it (rather tongue-in-cheek) labels “cowardly interventions.” This approach accepts the basic insight of Keynes that unregulated financial markets will be deeply unstable, causing periodic destructive depressions. Thus, fairly strong regulation of finance is needed. But following the insights of Hayek and Oakeshott, I argue that new regulations should be cowardly. We should as much as possible heed the wisdom embedded in markets and existing institutions. We should identify as best we can the biggest problems that current markets pose, and address those problems with new rules that are measured, limited, market-friendly, and subject to evaluation and pruning.
Recommended Citation
Brett McDonnell, Don't Panic! Defending Cowardly Interventions During and After a Financial Crisis, 116 Penn St. L. Rev. 1 (2011), available at https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/faculty_articles/160.
