MaggieMae
Reality bits
- Apr 3, 2009
- 24,043
- 1,635
- 48
Obama's not even a Liberal anymore, never mind a Marxist. But whatever helps the right sleep better at night in helping their justification that Obama is evil.
The problem as I see it is that so many people just hate him, period, that they fail to see what he's attempted to do. And it isn't some covert plan to transform this country into another France or a Marxist regime. Capitalism on many levels simply does not work in a diverse society such as ours. As Churchill once stated about democracy, it's the worst of all economic systems--except for all the others.
I wish more people would take the time to read this rather long article on capitalism as it exists in modern societies, and why standing alone without balancing offsets, will fail. STABILIZATION is the key, which ironically will ultimately allow the free market to be free again, which is what the Obama Administration has been trying to do.
Some excerpts:
Capitalism means growth, but also instability. The system is dynamic and inherently prone to crashes that cause great damage along the way. For about 90 years, we have been trying to regulate the system to stabilize it while still preserving its energy. We are at the start of another set of these efforts. In undertaking them, it is important to keep in mind what exactly went wrong. What we are experiencing is not a crisis of capitalism. It is a crisis of finance, of democracy, of globalization and ultimately of ethics.
...
Capitalism messed up," the British tycoon Martin Sorrell wrote recently, "or, to be more precise, capitalists did." Actually, that's not true. Finance screwed up, or to be more precise, financiers did. In June 2007, when the financial crisis began, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, IBM, Nike, Wal-Mart and Microsoft were all running their companies with strong balance sheets and sensible business models. Major American corporations were highly profitable, and they were spending prudently, holding on to cash to build a cushion for a downturn. For that reason, many of them have been able to weather the storm remarkably well. Finance and anything finance-related—like real estate—is another story.
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Finance has a history of messing up, from the Dutch tulip bubble in 1637 to now. The proximate causes of these busts have been varied, but follow a strikingly similar path. In calm times, political stability, economic growth and technological innovation all encourage an atmosphere of easy money and new forms of credit. Cheap credit causes greed, miscalculation and eventually ruin.
Zakaria: A Capitalist Manifesto | Newsweek Business | Newsweek.com