Das Wechselfieber der Volkswirtschaften – Anamnese, Diagnose, Therapie[The remittant fever of economies - anamnesis, diagnosis, therapy]

In the course of history the failure of the economiy has sparked societal catastrophes at different scales. The Proscription in the Roman Empire 43 BC, the French Revolution 1789 and the Great Depression starting 1929 are prominent examples of such historic events. The developments of the last years in Japan, East Asia, Latin America and Russia illustrate how topical these problems remain. These periodically recurring economic phenomena are largely independent of the specific form of capitalism and resemble a relapsing tertian fever. The standard explanation of mainstream economics for this behavior of the economy is government failure or the cyclical emergence of substantial innovation. The main argument of this paper is that economic crises are predominantly not the result of human or government failure, but are the immanent consequence of a systemic failure of the economic system, a taboo in standard economics. Political failure is an adequate description only in so far as governments are still unwilling to discuss about systemic changes or demand this discussion from academic economics.