Ms. Weber is the author of How China Escaped Shock Therapy: The Market Reform Debate in which she observes the effectiveness of government interventions in markets in China. The Chinese case she discusses began literally millennia ago when rulers discovered the natural dislocations endemic to an agricultural economy.
When crops were plentiful, prices would retreat, impoverishing farmers, and when they were scarce, prices would rise, taxing the poor and rewarding speculators. Government purchases of crops and essential goods (salt and iron) meant they protected the poor from speculators, and could control the prices of those things while they got revenue from their sale.
Classical economics calls the speculation government intervention prevented "rent seeking." Economic rent is money paid for no productive purpose. The Chinese example is a clear reminder that government can support productive activity.
The range of government interventions that work contradict the free market advice of the neoliberals and libertarians. Governments that follow the advice of the latter--in the case of China, the Kuomintang Nationalists who had to deal with very bad hyperinflation--often are turned out when inflation overwhelms society.
Here she is in Foreign Affairs discussing the political effects of inflation in more modern times. She's well worth a read..
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