Mega-Trend: Battle of Ideas

Third mega-trend is basically the battle of ideas which has been going on since time immemorial and it's the free markets versus the regulated market. In 1929 the free Markets took a big hit and they were wiped out and for about 50 years the regulated market theory, which is the Keynesian theory dominant in the world. After the crisis of 1970's the free market succeeded but this time, in 2007, a big crisis took place. Lot of Nobel prize winners have said that our models are wrong and we need to change the theories but nothing has really happened.

Actually the wealthy people studied history, and they said that last time, in 1929 we lost, but this time we will not. Now the real change has not taken place because they have captured the media, they have captured the parliaments, they have captured the rule makers, so even though there is a huge amount of understanding that something has gone wrong and something needs to be changed, but no action is taking place. For example the Dodd-Frank bill in the US congress was supposed to be a replacement for the Glass-Steagall Act; again the idea was to prevent banks from gambling. The Glass-Steagall Act was a small act of 30 pages easy to understand but the Dodd-Frank Act has 600 pages that are full of you loopholes and any one can find the way through. Even though the attempt was made to prevent banks from gambling but it was not successful because those people who had money had bought their Congressmen and this documented fact. In the USA there was a law that prevented corporations from giving too much money to Congressmen on their campaigns because it was clear that this is like a bribe but this law was repealed. Now the corporation can give millions of dollars to their congressmen and get him elected. So, bribery is now officially legal in the USA and in that situation the multinational corporations with huge amounts of money can buy the government. Although the conditions were right for the regulation side to win again but in fact it has been blocked.