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AbstractThe paper contributes to a symposium of the Oxford Review of Economic Policy on 'Capitalism: What has Gone Wrong, What Needs to Change, and How can it be Fixed?'. The analysis starts from the observation that, in the United States, the United Kingdom, and continental Europe, widespread discontent has become an important political force. I attribute this discontent to a sense of unfairness in developments of the past few decades. I relate this sense of unfairness to: (i) negative effects of structural change, including joblessness and regional decline, (ii) the observation of extraordinary growth in executive remuneration and financial-sector remuneration, coupled with government bailouts in the global financial crisis, and (iii) changes in public policy and public discourse, with a retrenchment of public services and public investment, except for bailouts and a focus on 'efficiency', the meaning of which is driven by the perceptions of corporate executives rather than standard welfare economics. To capture these developments, one needs to think about 'capitalism' in the sense of French capitalisme or German Kapitalismus, with a focus on the symbiosis of wealth and power, including the elimination of competition, rather than merely another term for the market economy.

The paper contributes to a symposium of the Oxford Review of Economic Policy on "Capitalism: What has Gone Wrong, What Needs to Change, and How can it be Fixed?". The analysis starts from the observation that, in the United States, the United Kingdom and continental Europe, widespread discontent has become an important political force. I attribute this discontent to a sense on unfairness in developments of the past few decades. I relate this sense of unfairness to: (i) negative effects of structural change, including joblessness and regional decline, (ii) the observation of extraordinary growth in executive remuneration and financial-sector remuneration, coupled with government bailouts in the global financial crisis, and (iii) changes in public policy and public discourse, with a retrenchment of public services and public investment, except for bailouts and a focus on "efficiency", the meaning of which is driven by the perceptions of corporate executives rather than standard welfare economics. To capture these developments, one needs to think about "capitalism" in the sense of French "capitalism" or German "Kapitalismus", with a focus on the symbiosis of wealth and power, including the elimination of competition, rather than the English sense of merely another term for the market economy.

The paper contains comments made on the Financial Stability Board's (FSB) Consultation Report concerning the success of regulatory reforms since the global financial crisis of 2007-2009. According to these comments, the FSB's assessment of the role of equity is too narrow, being phrased in terms of bankruptcy avoidance and risk taking incentives, without attention to debt overhang creating distortions in funding choices, as well as the systemic impact of ample equity reducing deleveraging needs after losses and equity contributing to smoothing of lending and asset purchases over time. The FSB's treatment of systemic risk pays too little attention to mutual interdependence of different parts of the system that is not well captured by linear causal relationships. Finally, the comments point out that bank resolution of systemically important institutions is still not viable, for lack of political acceptance of single-point-of-entry procedures, for lack of funding of banks in resolution (in the EI), for lack of fiscal backstops (in the EU), and for lack of political acceptance of bank resolution with bail-in.