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? We never have had free market capitalism, thank God.
We never had a system that requires personal responsibility. In real free markets no one is there for you when your raid on the markets fails you miserably and all that you'll have left when the smoke clears is your ideological pride. Your money, your houses, your cars and whatever else makes you the "elite" will all be auctioned off and you'll be left hoping the government will just feed you soup and you'll have to stand in line with everyone else.
What we got this go-round is a quasi-capitalist system that allows you to profit for risk taking and to be bailed out when it doesn't work out. Responsibility thrown out the door. Guaranteed profits for the few and the politicians that approved of it still stuck in the affluence they became so accustomed to.
There is too many actual examples of free markets that brought people, in droves, to vote with their feet and enjoy the fruits of that ideology. In some cases there are 1818+ people per sq mile. I.e. Singapore....
We never had a system that requires personal responsibility. In real free markets no one is there for you when your raid on the markets fails you miserably and all that you'll have left when the smoke clears is your ideological pride. Your money, your houses, your cars and whatever else makes you the "elite" will all be auctioned off and you'll be left hoping the government will just feed you soup and you'll have to stand in line with everyone else.
What we got this go-round is a quasi-capitalist system that allows you to profit for risk taking and to be bailed out when it doesn't work out. Responsibility thrown out the door. Guaranteed profits for the few and the politicians that approved of it still stuck in the affluence they became so accustomed to.
There is too many actual examples of free markets that brought people, in droves, to vote with their feet and enjoy the fruits of that ideology. In some cases there are 1818+ people per sq mile. I.e. Singapore....
"The financial reform bill places enormous responsibilities and discretion into the hands of the regulators. Its ultimate success or failure will depend on the actions and follow-through of these regulators for many years to come. It is estimated that various federal agencies will be charged with writing over 200 rulemakings and dozens of studies.
Many of the same regulators who failed in the run-up to the last crisis will once again be given the solemn task of safeguarding our financial stability. Like many others, I am concerned whether they have the capacity and wherewithal to succeed in this endeavor. he American people, for that matter, must stay focused on these issues, if just to help ensure that Congress indeed will fulfill its oversight duty and its duty to intervene if the regulators fail.
Many of the opponents of Wall Street reform would like to make the dubious claim that the recovery is being held back by uncertainty about future regulations and taxes. In reality, it is being held back by the financial shock and the fact that we are still in a period of financial instability and undergoing an excruciating process of deleveraging.It is therefore imperative that we build a financial system on a firmer foundation.
The American economy cannot succeed unless we restore and maintain financial stability. We simply cannot afford another financial crisis or continued financial instability if the American economy is to succeed in the coming decades. Getting financial regulation right and maintaining it for years to come should be one of this nation's highest priorities because the price of failure is far too high. "
An interesting article about the relationship between queen bees and workers bees over the last few decades.
"Forward-thinking CEOs like General Electric's Jeff Immelt (taking GE "green" through "Ecomagination"), former Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott (reorienting the company internally and externally on health insurance and prescription drugs), Safeway's Steve Burd (championing a healthy workforce), PepsiCo's Indra Nooyi ("Performance with Purpose"), and PNC Bank's Jim Rohr (devoting $100 million of company money to its early education "Grow Up Great" initiative) understand the importance of repositioning business away from short-term thinking to a longer-term investment approach that benefits shareholders, employees, communities, and the country.
We need more CEOs and boards to follow their examples. Only when that happens can we be certain that the values that have led to short-term economic bubbles have really changed for the better."
Its time for us to come up with new paradigms and models because the Ayn Rand/Milton Friedman wet dream has turned into a nightmare.
"Needed: a new economic paradigm
Bad models lead to bad policy: central banks, for instance, focused on the small economic inefficiencies arising from inflation, to the exclusion of the far, far greater inefficiencies arising from dysfunctional financial markets and asset price bubbles. After all, their models said that financial markets were always efficient. Remarkably, standard macroeconomic models did not even incorporate adequate analyses of banks.
No wonder former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, in his famous mea culpa, could express his surprise that banks did not do a better job at risk management. The real surprise was his surprise: even a cursory look at the perverse incentives confronting banks and their managers would have predicted short-sighted behaviour with excessive risk-taking.
Changing paradigms is not easy. Too many have invested too much in the wrong models. Like the Ptolemaic attempts to preserve earth-centric views of the universe, there will be heroic efforts to add complexities and refinements to the standard paradigm. The resulting models will be an improvement and policies based on them may do better, but they too are likely to fail. Nothing less than a paradigm shift will do. "
All those that complain about gubberment, why the love for the tyranny of an oligarchy (http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/06/09/pm_taking_stock_q - broken link)?
"They did not respond to securitization, which is the basic condition for the creation of these toxic assets. Neither Alan Greenspan or anybody else at the Fed seemed to be concerned."
Corporations and the rich are now practicing what I call “Hyper-Capitalism”. Hyper-Capitalism can be defined as the pursuit of profit and capital gains about all other interest. Hyper-Capitalism places all other interest such as the national interest, the interest of workers, the interest of creating a better or more just society as purely secondary interest, if they are of any interest at all.
That’s why you have corporations outsourcing jobs to countries with lower wage scales. That’s why many of the biggest corporations in America get the majority of their revenue outside of the United States. That’s why after each recession we’ve had since the late 1980’s fewer and fewer workers get hired back after each economic recovery.
The American conservative movement is financed by corporate interest and is used by them to formulate national policy that protects their interest and furthers their goals. They’ve thoroughly convinced a great many Americans that they will benefit from “Trickle Down Economics” while corporate executives continue to profit. Jobs go to other countries and the American middle class shrinks.
What we got this go-round is a quasi-capitalist system that allows you to profit for risk taking and to be bailed out when it doesn't work out. Responsibility thrown out the door. Guaranteed profits for the few and the politicians that approved of it still stuck in the affluence they became so accustomed to.
It's called "Crony Capitalism", and our current President is quite good at it.
And Ronald Reagan, George Bush Sr, Bill Clinton, and George Bush Jr., weren't in league with corporate interest?
Ronalld Reagan coined the phrase "Trickle Down Economics" since the Reagan era the incomes of the rich increased faster than any other income group. George Bush Jr. accelarated this trend with less regulation of the financial markets and taxation policies specifically structured to help the rich and corporatons. Under George Bush Jr. incomes for the middle class stagnated while incomes for the richest Americans grew faster than any other group.
Also some of the richest companies in America are in the process of filling Republican campaign coffers with cash.
The reality is that corproations are more powerful than the United States Government and they now dictate economic policy not the other way around. We now longer have government by the people for the people. We have government by the corporatrions for the corporations.
And Ronald Reagan, George Bush Sr, Bill Clinton, and George Bush Jr., weren't in league with corporate interest?
RonaldReagan coined the phrase "Trickle Down Economics" since the Reagan era the incomes of the rich increased faster than any other income group. George Bush Jr. accelerated this trend with less regulation of the financial markets and taxation policies specifically structured to help the rich and corporations. Under George Bush Jr. incomes for the middle class stagnated while incomes for the richest Americans grew faster than any other group.
Also some of the richest companies in America are in the process of filling Republican campaign coffers with cash.
The reality is that corporations are more powerful than the United States Government and they now dictate economic policy not the other way around. We now longer have government by the people for the people. We have government by the corporations for the corporations.
When Reagan took office the misery index was at 20.76. 8 years later it was more than cut in half. Since he took office the misery index has stayed under double digits except for a brief time where the former Soviet Union found its bearings. The only other time in history where there was a longer stretch of lower numbers was after WW II where there was a different kind of free market, one in which there were virtually no competitors in the world for decades due to destroyed infrastructures after the war.
What all that means is one must come to the realization that there are other world wide competitors now and that intrinsically means a loss of market share. The only way to compete is to be the best and provide the best product at the best value. That's the antithesis of false markets and propping up failed businesses and ideas.
The United States Misery Index By Year (http://www.miseryindex.us/customindexbyyear.asp - broken link)
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