Where’s John Maynard Keynes When You Need Him?

This morning’s testimony before Congress affords US Treasury Secretary Paulson and Fed Chairman Bernanke yet another opportunity to allay the fears of all parties interested in the health and wellbeing of the world’s economies and markets. Unfortunately, however, what is likely to be heard is more dogmatic drivel regarding the magic of the markets as the elixir that cures all ills.

Words such as “market discipline” will almost certainly be uttered by Messrs. Paulson and Bernanke today, as they cling to an ideology, “market fundamentalism” (laissez-faire or neo liberalism, if you prefer), whose time has passed. For with their adherence to “market discipline” comes the front line, the first wave of economic chaos in the form of a rolling destruction of major chunks of the financial services industry (not wholly undeserved) and the multi-dimensional feedback loop that the resulting deleveraging and radical shrinkage of the credit creation process will produce on the US (and ultimately world) economy.

Perhaps one might wonder if those on the other side of today's testimony table might provide some philosophical leadership in this highly charged political year. Guess again.

The Republicans find themselves locked in a defensive mode attempting to preserve their market fundamentalism ideology. (Supply side voodoo economics still rules this roost.) And where they are proactive is in areas that are tied to the ole timey magic of the “invisible hand” such as oil crisis = more land for drilling. No real solutions. No real comprehensive energy policy. More of the same animal spirits, magic-of-the-markets thinking.

As for the Democrats, their agenda is fairly obvious – look busy! As they appear to “fight” for the US consumer against the dark forces of cowboy capitalism and market fundamentalism their real end game is more power via a landslide victory this fall. Until then, why take more than band-aid economic action that will result in any form of a rebounding US economy when the more advantageous political objective is to pin the McCain tail on the Bush donkey?

Investment Strategy Implications

Cowboy capitalism expressed in the financial markets is market fundamentalism. They are rooted in the same philosophical thinking that has wrecked havoc on the world’s economies and markets via fat tail economic and financial crises that mega trends such as globalization, technological innovation, and financial innovation have only exacerbated.

What is needed, and getting more desperately so with each passing month, is new thinking and a new intellectual philosophy regarding government, the economy, and the markets. A good start would be a clear recognition that the philosophical underpinnings of the past two decades, the market ideology known as market fundamentalism and its economic counterpart, cowboy capitalism (replete with trickle down economics and ever resetting stock options for corporate executives), has produced radicalized results for the interconnected world economy and markets. What is needed is fresh thinking and a willingness to transform a broken system rooted in a defunct ideology. But that is not what you and I will hear today.

What you will hear is regulation and half measures. But neither is a real, sustainable solution. Therefore, the only remaining question is what will it take for transformative action that will produce less radical economic and financial results? The answer might lie in a global recession to rival the one some 70 years ago. Then we may see who emerges as this century’s John Maynard Keynes.