Economism

The JKHC Forum presents a proposal outlining potential responses to the "financial tsunami," including each item's pros and cons. Among them are restoring confidence in the system, loosening up credit markets, introducing a new regulatory regime, capping excessive executive pay, and boosting public spending, among others. In making the case for these measures, however, JKHC implores, "this is no time for politics or ideology." The interesting thing about such a statement is the implication that the arguments for and against the proposed measures, not to mention the details of their deployment and implementation, are neither political nor ideological. Like calls for bipartisanship, or, more ridiculously, post-partisanship, such claims represent an arch-political gesture masquerading as technocratic objectivity, notwithstanding the speaker's good intentions: let's put politics aside and carry out my agenda.