» Tuesday, 10 November A.D. 2009
prescient words
Two quotes from The Soul of Capitalism by William Greider.
The standard assumptions of efficiency, however, are regularly mocked by real life outcomes. The faith in efficiency was shaken most recently by the horrendous disintegration of stock prices that destroyed somewhere between $6 and $8 trillion in capital, including especially the retirement savings of working families. The financial system's managers shrugged this off as an unfortunate occurrence and lamely explained that these things are to be expected in the tides of free-market capitalism...The system, remember, arduously accumulates its surplus and savings by imposing painful sacrifices and brutal dislocations on innocent participants such as workers or communities Then it artificially inflates the supposed value of those savings as invested in the assets of financial markets. Then it abruptly collapses those assets, leaving millions of families with devastating losses and a much bleaker future. The savvier big players are able to accumulate still larger fortunes while the ignorant herds experience the bracing tonic of free-market insecurity.
This book was written in 2003. Have we learned anything?
A couple of pages later, we find the following. (Please note that this is written at the beginning of a section; I think that knowledge brings some added punch.)
The federal government cannot do this for people. That is hard for many to digest, but anyone who takes seriously the possibility of reforming capitalism in fundamental ways has to start by abandoning some inherited political reflexes. The government has the power to articulate society's larger aspirations, but it is not equipped to execute this deeper kind of economic transformation nor, at this point, even lead the way. If the political community were so inclined (and obviously it's not), legislative leaders would not know where to being, what new arrangements to command by law or to encourage with subsidy. If an activist president set out with good intentions to rewire the engine of capitalism--to alter its operating values or reorganize the terms of employment and investment or tamper with other important features--the initiative would very likely be chewed to pieces by the politics. Given the standard legislative habits of modern government, not to mention its close attachments to the powerful interest defending the status quo, the results would be marginal adjustments at best and might even make things worse.
Government's handicaps are more substantial than the conservative mood. Washington, as we explore later on, has itself become a principal barrier to reformulating the economic system, and it regularly acts as unwitting collaborator in much of the social damage...
Again, this book was written in 2003. Eerie.
posted by Nate @ 9:55AM