Market fundamentalism has been at the heart of U.S. economic policy for the last three decades. From Ronald Reagan and trickle down economics to Bill Clinton and deregulation the Washington Consensus has ruled the day. Fewer rules, open markets, and free trade. The impact has been far reaching. We are witnessing the fall out now but the corruption, the rot may run much deeper. The free market ethos is not limited to Wall Street. According to Benjamin Barber it has contributed to the deformation of citizens into consumers.

Which begs the question, if the consensus has really come apart what will replace it?

The so-called fight for Barack Obama’s economic soul may offer some indication of the direction we’re headed. According to Robert Scheer writing in the Nation, Obama is listening more closely to former fed chair Paul Volcker and Warren Buffet—not exactly socialists--than he is to Robert Rubin and Laurence Summers, architects of the economic policies supported by both political parties that have led to the current crisis. But how far will Obama go and is the United States capable of creating a more egalitarian market system? What would that system look like?

Today on GRITtv Arun Gupta of The Indypendent, Teresa Ghilarducci, Director of the Schwartz Center of Economic Policy Analysis at the New School and the author of When I’m Sixty-Four: The Plot Against Pensions and the Plan to Save Them, Benjamin Barber, the author most recently of Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole, and Christopher Miraldi a former Wall Street trader discuss the future of capitalism and the possibility of building an egalitarian market system.