In 1950, at the start of the Cold War and toward the end of Stalin's rein in the Soviet Union, six leftist writers -- André Gide, Richard Wright, Ignazio Silone, Stephen Spender, Arthur Koestler and Louis Fischer -- collaborated on a book (The God that Failed) in which they related their conversion to and disillusion with communism.
“The God that Failed” would be an equally apt title for a work that would describe events of the last few months in the global economy. For, in a matter of a few weeks, a major deity has bit the dust, the myth of the Market as an infallible engine of wealth creation and economic allocation to be interfered with at one's own peril.
Never mind that the state (and not God's invisible hand) always has been the essential element underpinning and supporting this alleged divinity, the Market. It's too bad, mere collateral damage, if the implacable laws of laissez-faire mean that the many who work for their money will earn little while the few whose money works for them will make out like bandits.
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