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A leading economist has likened the nation's acceptance of free-market capitalism to that of the brainwashed characters in the film The Matrix, unwitting pawns in a fake reality.

aims to disprove what he sees as economic myths, including the idea that people are paid what they are worth, that the "trickle down" effect of increasing wealth among the rich helps the poor, and that education makes countries more prosperous.

"Another myth that needs to be busted is the idea that we can discuss economics without any moral implications,"

How do you price the tonne of carbon that, once burned, tips the balance and triggers catastrophic, irreversible global warming?This question is phrased to give scope for only one answer: there is no price and therefore carbon markets are pointless.

how effective is pricing in carbon markets?

There is no mechanism for pricing in this situation because the outcomes are so asymmetrical: extinction or cash.

Liberal analysts, by contrast, are more likely to focus on the way Greenspan's aversion to regulation transformed pell-mell innovation in financial products and excessive bank leverage into lethal phenomena.

Paul Krugman, who noted in one interview: "Regulation didn't keep up with the system."

excessive reliance on mathematical models like the VAR and the dread Gaussian copula function, which led to the underpricing of unpredictable forms of risk