In late 2023, Geert Noels, CEO and founder of Econopolis and former partner and chief economist at Petercam, joined CBS Professor Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh to discuss economic gigantism. This subject serves as the focal point of Noels’s latest book Capitalism XXL: Why the Global Economy Became Gigantic and How to Fix It.
The trend for bigness goes beyond businesses: schools, hospitals, libraries, and other organizations have consolidated. A larger entity can seem attractive for its short-term financial gains, but the results may produce social costs.
Rather than advocating for the dismantling of the capitalist system in favor of neo-Marxism, Noels argues that we must instead return to the roots of capitalism and embrace its traditional principles, as articulated by Adam Smith in the eighteenth century.
Read a transcript of the conversation below:
Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh: Good evening everyone. My name is Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh. I'm a professor here in the finance department. I'm a professor of real estate at Columbia Business School. For those of you for whom this is the first time coming to our beautiful new building, we've been here for the past couple of years.
What you may not know is that at the time that we opened this new building, we also opened a new initiative, which is called The Hub. And The Hub is essentially our internal think tank, where we talk about problems relating to business and society. And where we invite policymakers, business leaders, authors, community members essentially, to interact with us about problems that are of importance to society. And it's very much in that context that we meet here tonight to talk about what has happened to the economy, not just the US economy, but sort of the global economy and the economic system, our capitalist economic system. And we're incredibly pleased to have with us tonight here, Geert Noels. Geert is an economist, a business leader, as well as an author. And today we're going to talk about his book called Capitalism XXL, which was translated into English, from Dutch into English, this year.
So by way of background, Geert studied applied economics at the University of Antwerp and University of Leuven in Belgium. He obtained his MBA in Lisbon as well and started his career in auditing and then transitioned to the research division of the Belgian Federation of Employers and later to a large Belgian asset manager called Petercam where he became chief economist. In 2009 he founded his own firm Econopolis, where he is the CEO. Econopolis is both an economic consulting firm as well as an asset manager.
Geert appears very frequently in the Belgian media, written media as well as TV on all things economics. He was actually voted one of the top 10 intellectuals in Flanders by a large Belgian newspaper recently. And like every good Belgian, Geert is an avid cyclist. The other thing I should mention is Geert was a prominent adviser to the Belgian Ministry of Finance during the financial crisis as well as in an earlier financial crisis. So he is definitely very well connected in Belgium. Welcome Geert. Thank you. So let's get into it.
So the basic premise of Capitalism XXL, which the Dutch title is gigantism. And it turns out gigantism is an English word as well. It's the name of a disease, and it's a disease whereby organisms' bodies are growing sort of beyond bound — they're growing too much. Cells are growing — think of cancer, sort of multiplying. And it's basically sort of a metaphor for our super -sized economy that we have today. Call it morbidly obese — we're familiar with these problems in the United States of America, right. So Geert, can you tell us a little bit about what are the symptoms that typify this disease, this gigantism disease.
Geert Noels: Yes, thank you Stijn. Well most known is of course the big giants. They've grown so large that they dominate the economy, they dominate the stock market. A lot of data now shows that it's historically even exceptional what we are going through. The stock market capitalization of these big tech firms is larger than the capitalization of the whole Eurozone for the first time now. Other things that have been illustrated or documented is the market power of these companies in terms of margins and so then going to economics that this is unhealthy. They can have margins that indicate some market power that disturbs let's say normal competition.
They have an impact on things like productivity. Seems that because of lack of competition, the whole productivity gains are not coming through. But in my opinion, they also have societal consequences. I have a lot of data in the book where you can see that, for instance, let's say, tendency of organizations growing very large is also something that you see in hospitals, libraries. I have some data on schools and universities and we can come back on it, but for instance, in schools, large entities create a lot of negative societal consequences. So, it's something that dominates the whole world economy and society and therefore I thought it was interesting to elaborate on it and also think about what are the consequences because you know in Europe there's a lot of criticism on capitalism. I don't know how it is in the United States but the degrowth movement is very strong in Europe. They reject capitalism — a lot of neo -Marxist theories are developing. I don't know how close you are to these movements.
So we need to defend, I think, what's sound for the economy and society. And in my opinion, capitalism is still the best system. But then it has to be sound capitalism. And therefore, we have to think about what is real capitalism, what is sound capitalist, and what are the things that have grown unhealthy and have led to what I call gigantism. And I hear that in English it doesn't sound well, so it's capitalism XXL. So that was the reason for writing the book.
Nieuwerburgh: So you talked about size. You talked about concentration. You talked about markups, market power. There's also this sense of decline in business dynamism, sort of fewer young companies. Anything else you sort of want to say about that?
Noels: In terms of cartels, what we see is that Europe has been much more severe on limiting the existence of cartels. And so cartel penalties are much heavier in Europe and they seem to have been neglected in the United States. Also, things like predatory acquisitions so that big companies start to buy preemptively promising young companies.
It's a bit like in sports terms that they buy a whole team of promising athletes before they can form a group or club that could compete with them. So it's very unhealthy in my opinion. I think the cartel issue is really worrying. In the book probably the tipping point has been around the millennium, the whole Microsoft case. And I dig deeper into the Microsoft case because you know that at that time there was a decision to break up Microsoft in three pieces and it has been reversed. And that was in July 2001, just before 9 /11, but already in the process of the technology crash. But the consequences of this have been huge on of course, the development of the tech giants later on. And so we unlearned in a certain way that breaking up oligopolistic systems or monopolistic companies can be healthy for the capitalist system. And that's one of the main drivers in the corporate sector of the existence of giant companies. I can you give you perhaps also one example out of the outside of the tech sector — it's this company, JP Morgan, and there you see the market capitalization, so just as a measure of concentration, and you see how, from 2008, 2009, the financial crisis, most of the other systemic banks, they kind of flatlined and JP Morgan has grown into the only big systemic bank. It's more than 30 % of bank capitalization, and worldwide, it's 7%. And then you get a kind of feeling also of what it could mean in terms of not only impact, but in terms also of market, the working of the market itself. In some niches, there is no competition anymore. JP Morgan is the market.
And so then you also get counterparty risk of, let's say, there is no counterparty anymore. And then who will save JP Morgan when anything goes wrong? You're going back almost to 1913, where before the Federal Reserve was created. Morgan was the central bank. It seems that this year, you know, with the bankruptcy of the Silicon Valley Bank, where J .P. Morgan was asked to save the banking system that we were back to 1913, or before 1913, before the existence of the central bank, that you ask one bank to save the system. So it's kind of an exceptional situation.
It's not only financial, it's not only tech, it's also in the pharma sector, a lot of concentration in the food sector — seven or eight companies that that dominate the whole food sector. It's a big issue.
Nieuwerburgh: Tell our audience a little bit about what you call the Champions League Effect because I think that's sort of a nice way to put it.
Noels: Do you know the Champions League? Who knows the Champions League here? Who is a soccer fan? Well, you know the Champions League is kind of the super league for the best soccer clubs in Europe. Barcelona. Who knows Barcelona? Manchester City, PSG, Liverpool. But once upon a time it didn't exist and smaller clubs they could go very far.
Belgian clubs for instance I have my colleagues here like Brugge or Antwerp or Wanderlicht they ended up with the best four or the best two or even one champion.
And then something changed. The game didn't change but the way the competition was organized changed and what I mean by the Champions League effect can be best illustrated by making the ranking of the clubs from the small countries and the clubs of the big countries . So when the competition of the big clubs started, it became like the competition of clubs for the big countries. So you can see how quickly it adjusted to a competition of the big clubs, where entering the league is almost impossible for the clubs of the smaller countries. And this kind of Champion’s League effect is also what you see, for instance, in the food industry or in the pharma industry. Once you are so big and you're in the Champions League, it's very difficult to re -entry. Also, because they do kind of predatory acquisitions — some of the most promising players from the smaller competitions are bought preemptively at a very young age. Some of these clubs have enough talent to form a second team that can play in another competition and become a champion. So then you see it's not about the game, it's also about how we organize the competition. And I consider economics or the economy like the game we play. Everybody's playing the game and we change the way in which the competition is organized. And then a lot of people start to feel disconnected with the game. They tend to feel that it's not fair, that their club doesn't have a chance to become champion or compete in the same fair way. And then I think that the societal effect starts to unfold and that's a reason why I stress on the Champions League effect.
People reject capitalism because they do not understand that in a way capitalism can be a very fair way to organize the game. But they see a kind of unfair capitalism in which the big ones always win and the smaller ones, even though they are very talented, they lose a talent and they lose the edge to become one day a champion themselves. And that's why we have to think about fair capitalism, humane capitalism also, before larger groups of the society start to reject capitalism. And I don't know how it is in the United States, but in Europe it's a big movement. They really start to reject the capitalist system.
Nieuwerburgh: So let's talk a little bit about that. So you talk in the book about fake capitalism, right? Sort of capitalism that's capitalism in name only. But if we go back to John Maynard Keynes and to Adam Smith in fact, right, it's no longer satisfying the sort of the vision that Adam Smith had for capitalism.
And in particular, in your book, you point out the sort of these two big problems with our modern version of capitalism, right? One is these oligopolies and monopolies that you described. And then the other one is the rent seeking that is happening by these large players. So can you tell us a little bit more about that and sort of how we strayed from Adam Smith's ideals and sort of why that matters?
Noels: I don't know if you read books of Adam Smith. I did, but I have to say that I rediscovered Adam Smith when writing Capitalism XXL. He's famous for The Wealth of Nations, which is his most famous book. But long before, he wrote The Theory of Moral Sentiments. In fact, he's a philosopher in training, and he became an economist. And Adam Smith, he was very much worried about the moral consequences of an economic system. And I tried to summarize it because he highlighted two important things.
He said if an economic system wants to be fair and wants to be considered as also moral, we have to be careful of two things, two things only.
He warned for cartels. So competition should be fair. And every time there was an indication of cartel formation, the government should intervene. So that's the first. You can read it throughout his books, always mentioning the fact that the system, you can let it go, you can let capitalism go a whole way, but you have to be careful of cartels. And the second one is, you could call it crony capitalism, that the distance between companies and politicians would become tight, so that you have to be careful to keep some distance between politicians or policy makers and the corporate sector.
And that's what I think has changed with John Maynard Keynes, who saw corporations as a tool to achieve some policy objectives. And of course the time in which John Maynard Keynes was active was in a period, first of all, just before the war, a heavy crisis, and then there was a war economy, and so there was a reason to use bigger corporations or the largest corporations to execute a policy that had to be achieved quickly, efficiently, because there was an urgency. Now, I think that he is at the level of, what I call gigantism because he believes that the big corporations would do it more efficiently and because of the trickle -down effect, also the smaller ones would benefit from it. And what we have seen, for instance, in the European economy is that this kind of Keynesian policy, big funds, every time there is a kind of crisis — lately we saw it with COVID — a big fund is created and then the big corporations are asked to get the funds and spend it. But there is a lot of corruption. There is a lot of let's say funds that are wasted and I see this as a conflict between Smith and Keynes. I think we have to rediscover Keynes and also think about the moral consequences of an economic system, and also think about a Keynesian policy that can be very good in certain circumstances, but has the drawback of leading to this growing capitalism. That in fact, governments pursue a tight liaison or tight relationship with the big corporations. And in Europe, this is a big problem.
I think in the U .S., it's also a problem, but because lobbying is so intensive. In the book you will find data on the number of lobbyists in Washington, for instance, it's huge. And so we are not aware anymore of the importance of keeping such a healthy distance between corporations and policy makers. I think we are really in the heart of one of the most important capitalist problems at this moment.
Nieuwerburgh: Absolutely. So let's switch gears a little bit. As we discussed, you see our current system and the growth, the gigantism in our economy, sort of the result of both the monopolies as well as sort of this crony capitalism. I think there's a lot to be said for that. The rules and regulations are favoring these large firms and I think that includes things like product market regulation, lack of pro -competitive product market reforms, weaker antitrust enforcement, which we talked about with these penalties, more lobbying as you just mentioned, more politically connected firms, maybe also stricter labor regulation that makes it harder to hire and fire workers, occupational licensing. There's a lot of friction in the labor market as well. But I wonder whether there's sort of additional factors that can help us understand sort of the decline in business dynamism, some of which may actually not be as negative and maybe just sort of more natural. So one thing that comes to mind is demographics, right? So we have an aging population that sort of naturally leads to a decline in business dynamism.
Another theory that has been put forward is, Bob Gordon said we ran out of high productivity ideas and the innovations we're doing today, maybe with the exception of AI, these ideas are running into diminishing returns. And then the one that I find maybe most appealing is technology. So information technology and the use of big data, presumably there's sort of a natural monopoly associated with data, right? Data has increasing returns. The more data you have, the more quality products you can make, like Google and Amazon knows exactly what we want so they can sort of tailor exactly, to our needs. There's more customization that's maybe valuable to consumers. Maybe even advertising that's more targeted, it's not as bad as advertising that's not targeted.
So is there sort of a case to be made here here for the sort of the natural technology or sort of larger firms because of this sort of natural monopoly that comes with data. So what's wrong with that picture? What's not to like about that?
Noels: Well, you're also pointing towards the lack of productivity gains, which is puzzling a lot of economists. Some say we're not measuring it very well, so perhaps we miss it in the statistics.
Others say it didn't come yet, it could come in the future. I think some of the reasons why we don't have the productivity gains that we would expect is also because of this monopolistic, let's say, formation of the economy. And so that whole process of creative destruction is not fully taking place. That's a hypothesis and an assumption. You're saying that, for instance, artificial intelligence will now be a new chance to show it, but the odds are a bit against it if you see that, again, the big giant tech companies are leading in this process. Alphabet and Microsoft are clearly taking the lead.
So I don't think that this will change the way going forward that we will see this happening. So I really think we have to change the system. And that's, again, a bit dangerous to say, but go back to the healthy system that we had. And so it's not like a revolution, but it's more like a rediscovery of why we chose the capitalist system to be perhaps not the best, but the least worst system to organize a society. And I'm really worrying about it, because every year that goes on, we see that it's just expanding. And there's always a hope that it will stop, but it's not the case.
Now, the reasons why we had gigantism, or let's say larger corporations, was also the interest rate rates. So interest rates, if they go down, you have more leverage effects. So that part is in need of adjusting. Another positive thing is, let's say corporate taxes, which have been — you will read that in the book — historically much lower for the big corporations compared to the smaller ones. Now with the new OECD minimum tax, it seems that there also is a change of the trend. So that's, let's say positive. Positive developments that we see that really are putting the system into reverse. But in my opinion, it's not enough. You will need more. And one of the things is, well, breaking up some of the big corporations, which is not bad for the shareholder. In fact, it can unlock a lot of value. It's not bad for competition. It's good for productivity growth. It's good for competition in general. So it's a pity that we unlearned the benefits from breaking up monopolistic, very large corporations, as we did in the past with AT&T and with Standard Oil. Microsoft should have been the next one. Alphabet is probably also something that could have been broken up. up.
Nieuwerburgh: So I hear you're not very sympathetic to this idea that technology is different, or the data economy, we can now go back to the world of Keynes, because now we live in this data economy. I do think you make a good point, which is that Microsoft is sort of a 49 % owner of open AI, right? So again, what started as maybe a small startup ended up sort of being owned by one of these giants. one of these large companies. I do think there's another interesting thing, though, which is that a company like Google felt threatened by open AI, right? So that to me suggests that there are new technologies can disrupt even very large companies. Now, we're a long way from Google losing a lot of its market cap because of that, but still, there seems to be sort of this potential for technology to disrupt what looked like very comfortable oligopoly positions. Aam I wrong about that or?
Noels: You're completely right and you should hope for AI to be a real threat for the big tech giants, but what you see is that they repeat their behavior, they try to look for the smaller companies to bring them in their power and the starting point is already very negative because they are in the best starting position. Now, you can also say that that was a good vision by Alphabet, for instance, because for 10 years they have been buying the best AI researchers, so they were well positioned. But in my opinion, it will not change the rules of the system.
Nieuwerburgh: So you think prohibiting things like these killer acquisitions where sort of companies are taking over these startups …
Noels: Yeah, you should really come to the point where — there was an interesting case recently where there was a legal battle to stop Apple from kind of doing exactly what I was pointing to. I don't know if you saw that case. So, almost like in the past, individuals starting the battle against Apple for this kind of process, which is very difficult if you're a small company, if you're an entrepreneur, because it's like, you accept the deal or you will be like, completely erased from the landscape. So, in the end, let's say the regulation should intervene and stop them from repeating this kind of process. acquisitions, which are really something documented being at the heart of keeping the giants in their position.
Nieuwerburgh: The other policy that I think might be useful is forcing information sharing, right? So because of like big data and all the natural advantages that come from larger data sets, it becomes very hard for smaller companies to compete with that. So part of it is that, you know, they're hogging, these large companies are hogging. all the data, and it becomes very hard to build, for example, a decent machine learning model as a startup if you don't get access to a large enough data set.
But if we somehow forced some of that data to be in the public domain, you could sort of imagine that could rekindle some competition.
Noels: Yeah, I totally agree with you, but I also think that it's a bit chasing the symptoms where we should learn that, treasuring the fact that small companies are at the heart of a capitalist system is something that can change the whole society. I will give you one example. I hear that there is still no Walmart in New York, is that correct? And it has been over the last 15 years, different kind of research where the lobby of Walmart tried to break into New York. And then there was the previous mayor. He made a research report, which was, I would say, say, I think it's in 2014 or something, you know, when it was. Sounds right, Bill de Blasio was definitely in power then. And he said, the history of the last decade tells us that Walmart tends to be our city's Trojan horse, and so he, from all the research that was available, he continued the policy of not letting Walmart enter New York because of the diversity of the shops because of how labor was organized.
And so it was an active policy not to let them enter. And interesting, so all the things that were documented in the report a few years later was kind of documented because of an, the New York Times, because of something that happened in a small town where Walmart disappeared. So they left the town. So at first, Etna thought there would be a lot of negative effects that people would leave the city, that it would be bad for tax income, et cetera. And what happened was just the reverse, that a kind of ecosystem developed. Small shops, new jobs, people coming back, the whole society which was much more connected. And so Etna relearned what it could bring to have another kind of economic system without such a big shop.
Now, I know it's not very popular to go against Walmart, but I'm just trying to illustrate that an active policy of knowing what the effect would be of letting a giant corporation enter a market, eliminating a lot of diversity in the system, that it's it happens in New York, which is not like a Marxist kind of city. Or I don't think so. That's not what I mean. So if it's-- happens here, I mean, we could relearn it.
And if I may so, I was talking about schools to Stijn. One of the things, I mean, in Belgium, but also increasingly, I see that in other countries. We have a lot of problems with schools, we have a lot of problems with things like racism and things like aggression, sexual aggression, et cetera. What you typically see is that, and it's very well documented in the United States, that it's a problem of large schools. It's not a problem that you have in small schools. And those who understand a bit correlation or statistics, it's not that all the large schools are in the cities. It's independent. from where they are. It's a problem of large schools. It's not a problem of schools in cities. And so we have to learn that small entities can be something of an enrichment of a society.
I know we are not trained as it. I'm an economist from the '80s and the '90s. I think a lot of the managerial courses are on economics. of scale, or for instance, all the benefits of free trade. And we all know that free trade also has backdrops. We also know that economies of scale are beneficial, but can have their limitations. And so I think we have to be much more balanced also in how we train economists to avoid some of the negative consequences of just going for scale.
Nieuwerburgh: So let's talk a little bit about that. That's sort of a good segue into our next topic on globalization, right? So our colleague and our former Dean Glenn Hubbard wrote a book recently called The Wall and the Bridge. Maybe some of you have read it. It's a wonderful book. And in it, he also starts from Adam Smith, just like you here. He's also a fan. And so he sort of brings up this notion of mass flourishing, right? So Adam Smith has this idea of mass flourishing. And so every time there are big disruptions to society, there's sort of potentially big changes. And these changes don't necessarily accrue to everybody equally.
And there's sort of these two big changes that have happened to our economy. One is technology, which we talked about. The other one is globalization. And I think every economist will tell you free trade is good. And in fact, it has brought incredible benefits to consumers over the decades, for the average person. But that doesn't mean for every person. And so there's been these winners and losers from trade. And I think economists have always known that. If you look at the models of free trade, they always talk about these distributional implications of trade. It's not that this was a surprise. But I think economists have been very bad at articulating that pros and cons of free trade to policymakers. And so you sort of end up with the policy advice being free trade, free trade, free trade for 20, 30 years sort of without having any remedies in place to deal with the victims of free trade, which is sort of like a large group of people that get displaced by when we used to make stuff in the United States and now it comes from China. Yes, it lowers prices for everybody, which is great. But a bunch of people lose their job in the Midwest, right? So this is sort of the Youngstown, Ohio sort of effect. And so this has led a group of people to basically, you know, disavow capitalism and globalization all together. And again, you can't really blame them, they lost their job, right? And it has led them to call for building walls.
That's sort of where the title, the wall and the bridge comes from, like we need to keep China out. We need to re -shore. our supply chains. We need to make stuff in the United States. That's the wall. So Glenn, instead, argues for a bridge. Like, let's build a bridge to these people so that they can reconnect to the modern economy. Maybe they can become a prompt engineer. Let's retool them so that they can be active in the modern economy. So it's sort of fair. Do you agree with this here? Or what's sort of your solution to sort of, you know, do you think that if we re-localize the economy, if we sort of make the economy smaller, do we sort of risk losing some of these benefits from globalization?
Noels: Well, before the Battle of Seattle, I was kind of very sympathetic of saying, you don't need any break on globalization. I was trained like that, saying, okay. OK, in the end, it's much better to have free trade and no limitations. And then over the last, let's say, 15 years, my opinion started to change. And it's like a game. You need some kind of fairness in the rules.
For instance, social protection is not the same around the world, but also intellectual property is not protected in the same way around the world. And so if you start, again, playing a game, game and the rules are not the same around the world, globalization will also, let's say, benefit more the cheaters than those who respect the rules. And I think that we kind of failed to defend also that, okay, there might be a transition period in which, yeah, you can say those who want to enter globalization can't meet with all the rules, but after the transition period it should be corrected. And for instance, that's the case with China. We have never come to a fair system with China where they respect all the rules.
You can also talk about, of course, the problems with climate change and with emissions. If you can pollute much more in one end of the world and in the other end of the world they are very strict on pollution, yeah, the there is no fairness in the cost. Let's say taking into account all the costs of producing product or a service and and still today if we talk about the last one there is no kind of carbon adjustment mechanism that is the same around the world. So I think there we need to get grips on how we organize globalization, or people will reject it and then you get walls, which is a bit happening today, so we are constructing kind of walls. We're also for peace and having less conflicts. I prefer the bridges. I don't think that it can be naive. I think there is less conflict if you trade with each other, if you have kind of commercial flows. So if we start building walls, also I think the conflicts around the world will increase. And that's the reason why globalization, except for the economic benefits, can also have a lot of benefits. It's just how this world can work together in a peaceful way.
Nieuwerburgh: I think you're definitely right about that. And I think it's interesting, like I guess you use the term prisoners' dilemma in the book, right? If you have anti -competitive behavior in China and actually let's call it what it is, also in the United States, right? Sort of both under Trump and under Biden. There's sort of been a pretty protectionist policy in the United States, and then Europe is sort of the warrior for the world for free markets, breaking up cartels. You know Europe ends up being the sucker that loses that loses market share in that world so it's sort of a prisoner's dilemma where everybody's forced to sort of then go along with these anti -competitive measures, which is sort of — hard to see how we break out of that prisoner's dilemma.
Noels: Yeah I think Europe today is at the losing side, it has a lot of social protection. It has also, it wants to be the leader in the climate transition, so very harsh on the companies and much harsher than in the rest of the world. And then, let's say, it doesn't have this technology sector that China and the US has. So I don't know if there are people from Europe, but if you look at all the, let's say, the important dimensions, it seems that Europe is losing strength, and that's a pity because in a lot of ways, Europe has perhaps a very fair system and tries to be also very moral in its capitalism, but it's not a winning combination today.
Nieuwerburgh: Good, so let's sort of wrap up this conversation and then slowly open it up for your questions and comments, but before we do that, Geert, why don't you give us sort of a high level summary of how do we move forward, right? So what are sort of the recommendations that your book ends up making at the end of the book? Sort of the, I think you have, I believe, 10 recommendations, you don't have to describe all 10 of them, but sort of your highlights, how the world can sort of move forward from here to deal with this gigantism.
Noels: Yes, I will not mention all 10 of them, but perhaps summarize and say, in all management schools, there should be a rediscovery of Adam Smith. I don't know if it's still thought at business schools like Columbia, but it's something that should happen. You should all rediscover Adam Smith, go to the library or buy books and start to learn about the importance of fair capitalism, of humane capitalism, of moral capitalism, of humane capitalism. That's very important in my opinion.
I think we should discover also the importance of going against cartels. I think also the role of central banks is something that we should assess. Are they still like an impartial player in the system of capitalism, or by the way they are conducting their monetary policy, are they favoring the giant corporations?
Then on regulation, I mentioned predatory capitalism as predatory acquisitions are something that should be easy, in my opinion, for regulators to monitor and to prevent.
Nieuwerburgh: And the other one I think that you mentioned, which I think is very important is the revolving door, sort of between the corporate sector and the political establishment.
Noels: Yeah, you know what the revolving doors are. That's also a problem in Europe. So people coming from policy sector and entering, for instance — the example that is highlighted a lot is Goldman Sachs — and become kind of advisors to these big corporations and letting them benefit from all the big funds or the policies and that's something in my opinion which is also easy to adjust. Doesn't need to be much more complex than that. I mean, if you talk about big data and you say, they all need the policy to have open source. That's all very complicated, it will take a lot of time. Whereas, targeting really the things that make capitalism today, like fake capitalism, in my opinion, is not so complicated.