The cumulative crises of 2008 create a chance to rethink the basic principles of the ‘economy’ - what is it good for?

"In the West, there has been a wave of crises - food price crisis, fuel crisis, sub-prime lending crisis, and the big bad one: the financial crisis. These crises have exposed the foolhardiness of blind faith in the efficient functioning of unregulated markets, and the powerlessness of governments to effect a widely acceptable solution when the interests of capital and labour forcefully collide." writes Nitasha Kaul.
The 'free markets' are free in a very specific way: trading in certain sectors of the economy may be unregulated and unsupervised, which means that individuals who operate within those markets can make short term decisions that benefit them while imposing long term costs on others. Thus, whenever the market is free from government regulation, it is actually individuals in it that are free to be irresponsible (due to naivete or malice) if it is in their interests.
The idea of economy - or political economy as it was originally coined by Adam Smith - implies management of financial flows by a central government with authority within the national – and economic – boundaries. When that authority is eroded by globalisation, free market philosophy and a legitimacy deficit, then the ground is opening for a paradigm change.
For actors in public life whose roles as governors or bankers are integral to the predominant paradigm, it becomes impossible to reframe the problems and solutions with new conceptualisation. This presages a paradigm change that also implies a political change. A threatening but at the same time uplifting prospect.
When Kuhn described the increasing contradictions that accumulate when a way of thinking was unable to further explain, he termed that as a paradigm change. This process sees a shift in thinking from the periphery of established practices to become a new center. As revolutionary as that may be for a domain of science, there the shift in power is limited to funding streams and intellectual status. But rethinking 'economy' threatens to uproot power relationships and capitalist structures on a much larger scale. Any threat to that can expect organised resistance.