Open Letter: The Way Forward

This is an open letter to world leaders attending the November 15 White House summit on financial markets and the world economy.

Dear world leaders:
The winter of 2008-2009 will prove to be the winter of global economic discontent that marks the rejection of the flawed ideology that unregulated global financial markets promote financial innovation, market efficiency, unhampered growth and endless prosperity while mitigating risk by spreading it system wide. For more than three decades, mainstream neo-liberal economists have preached, and regulators have accepted, the myth of the efficiency of unregulated markets, ignoring the critical lesson provided by John Maynard Keynes's analysis of interconnection of financial markets and the international payments system.