The discipline of political economy has conceptualized the notion of liberty and the respective role of the state and market in furnishing that liberty in financial markets. The roles of the state and market have been shaped by events such as the South Sea Bubble, the Great Crash of 1929, the collapse of Bretton Woods and the increasing incidence of financial crashes. The main task of this book is to identify how the different schools of political economy have defined the concept of liberty in a variety of ways and to examine how much freedom should be given to market actors operating in financial markets.