Epilogue: Why Care?

Abstract

The free market economic system in its new high-tech form is the most productive, creative, and efficient economic system the world has ever seen. However, there are certain ‘systems’ problems within it. Economists are still, for instance, learning how to contain the ‘business cycle’. The American Federal Reserve Board and the International Monetary Fund step in whenever the ‘bust’ portion of the cycle threatens the system, and they limit expansion when the ‘boom’ grows too exuberant. The world’s economic statesmen are getting better at monitoring and reducing such business-cycle fluctuations, but, practically and theoretically, the business cycle still generates a great deal of global insecurity.