When Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations in 1776, he sealed the foundations of what probably became the world’s most dominant economic model. The ideas of free markets, laissez faire and private sector hegemony appealed to most nations. The subsequent Great Depression came as a shock to the system but most experts, including a seminal study by Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz, attribute the blame mostly to the policies of the US Federal Reserve (the Fed) and not really to the market participants. The convenient and successful marriage between private-sector reforms and communist ideology in China and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 put a lid on the debate on free markets.
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