Über die Not-Wendigkeit von Nothilfe. Eine Handvoll ordnungspolitischer Betrachtungen angesichts der neuen Staatsgläubigkeit / Emergency measures help to save the free-market system

One of the results of the global financial and economic crisis is the fact that in all parts of society believers in “big government” are in the ascendancy. At the same time, inside the free-market camp the differences between the “ordoliberal” and the libertarian school of thought have become more distinctive. This article opposes the view that non-intervention would have been the best medicine against the crisis. Although government bears a significant part of the blame for the crisis, it still has to play a central role as an emergency helper in extraordinary times of need. Moreover, the free-market camp cannot simply wash its hands of its responsibility. The key question for all who support a system based on freedom will be how to prevent or at least alleviate the many undesirable long-term consequences of the anti-crisis measures. Market-oriented economic policy now means playing the role of the physician who takes life-saving emergency measures, knowing that they can lead to long-term damage or at least to a dependence on prescription drugs. In a democracy, a healthy mix of realism and self-criticism is more beneficial to the credibility and thus the influence of free-market economic policies than a dogmatic anti-interventionist position.