Shelton is actually more clear-headed than many. She recognizes that once you have things like deposit insurance and a central bank, then your financial system can longer be described as a market mechanism for guiding investment via price signals. https://theweek.com/articles/844967/trumps-rumored-fed-pick-poking-uncomfortable-truth-about-monetary-system 1/ https://twitter.com/sam_a_bell/status/1326970727883563021

Most "serious" people don't grapple with this. They think you can support deposit insurance and central banking as yet still treat the financial system as a private for-profit market in terms of regulatory and economic policy. Which is how you get Wall St in its current form. 2/

Shelton's problem is that she's a utopian: If deposit insurance and central banking stand in the way of the financial system being a true market, then get rid of them. Nevermind we created them because in their absence the system tore itself apart with repeated bank runs. 3/

This is what a Polanyi was getting at: A "true market" in finance will destroy society. It's unworkable. So society evolves away from a true market. But pretending finance remains a market despite that evolution creates its own problems. 4/

In other words, Shelton's arguments, crazy as they seem, are clarifying. By insisting on the impossible utopian solution to the contradiction, Shelton inadvertently points to the actual solution: Treat the financial system as a public utility. 5/5