We do so love the logic here

This is Jonathan Freedland walking out the idea for a trot but this is widely used out there at present:

Truss has discredited high-octane, free-market economics - perhaps for ever

Given our own position as paleo-neoliberals we’d argue with that - true neoliberalism has never been tried. Hey, why not use that argument, seems to work for socialists everywhere?

But put that aside, what really interests here is the proof that is being used, the clinching argument to show that markets don’t, in fact, work:

The financial markets recoiled

Using - as is being done here and again we’d argue with it, the gilts market problem was one of liquidity and collateral, not a more basic one about economic direction - the market reaction to show that markets don’t work doesn’t, umm, work.

If we are to accept the verdict of the financial markets then we are assuming that markets work. Because only if markets do work should we accept the information stemming from market responses. If markets do not in fact work then what the financial markets say about political policy is irrelevant. The Gnomes can bluster in their bunkers and politics doesn’t have to pay any attention.

What we can’t do, as a matter of basic logic, is insist that markets do work in passing a verdict upon policy but also that markets do not work. So, which is it? Markets tell us the truth or they don’t?

And if markets do work in processing information - the claim being made - then we should be using markets to discover and process information then, shouldn’t we?