Boom-bust pattern has meant even IMF and Bank of England are rethinking regulation Watching as the Spanish government announced drastic new austerity measures , you could have been forgiven for thinking that neoliberal orthodoxy holds sway almost as decisively as when Alan Greenspan was the maestro of the Federal Reserve. But away from Brussels, one element at least of the neoliberal canon – the idea that capital must be allowed to flow unchecked around the world – is coming under sustained attack. The theory says that free capital flows allow savings to be directed – by the invisible hand of the financial markets – to wherever they will be most profitably employed.