The world loves free markets, with good regulation

[Truthmatters]

http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/p...ationtradera/154.php?lb=btgl&pnt=154&nid=&id=


Here you go. Face reality the world likes the free market system but wants the protections that good regulation brings.

Stop the crazy socialism fear talk and join the entire world in making our markets safe to ensure commerse is healthy.

 

[Truthmatters]

A new poll of 20 countries from around the world finds a striking global consensus that the free market economic system is best, but that governments should also do more to regulate large companies. In all but one country polled, a majority or plurality agreed with the statement that “the free enterprise system and free market economy is the best system on which to base the future of the world.” On average, 61% agreed while 28% disagreed. The poll of 20,791 individuals was conducted by the international polling firm GlobeScan and analyzed in conjunction with the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) of the University of Maryland.

Ironically, the country that showed the highest level of support for the free enterprise system was China, with 74% agreeing that it is the best system. Others that were nearly as enthusiastic were the Philippines (73%), the US (71%), and India (70%).

We handle this right and China will open up wide and be a democracy.

 

[Diuretic]

the timing's good, we're looking at the spreading damage caused by unrestrained capitalism, it's an object lesson. The mixed economy with sensible regulation works. Command economies don't work and unrestrained capitalist economies will eventually destroy their hosts.

 

[AVG-JOE]

I wonder which of our (US) politicians are in support of free markets for individuals and small companies with reigns on big business and the 'super wealthy'?

Kind of hard to gauge... Between the source of campaign money that is big enough to come with a legible voice and a media that is prostituted to big business, we really don't know.

It makes me wonder... which is the lesser of the two evil choices we face?

If we go socialist with the democrats we'll fall behind the world, especially China, economically...

If we keep big business in power via the republicans, we risk war against the driving force behind our economy - Big Business.

Too bad there isn't a "Constitutionalist Party" - get us back to our free market roots...

-Joe

 

[Toro]

I completely agree.

The market creates the most wealth for the most people most of the time. (It does not create all the wealth for all the people all of the time.) Thus, it is the engine of growth.

However, sometimes the market veers off course. The government should be there to make sure it stays on course. Increasing regulation that increases transparency and information for the consumer is the single best thing the government can do to help the market.

 

[KungFusion]

What's most interesting about the deregulation rhetoric among US conservatives is how silent it is on the issues surrounding the Corporate Welfare State so alive and well in situations like the Bear-Stearns fiasco.

apparently, socialism is just fine with the free-market orthodoxy under the right circumstances.

 

[Diuretic]

I think corporate welfare's existence is evidence of the latter day failure of capitalism as an economic theory and practice. I have yet to work out why so many approve in full throat a system that depends on a cycle of boom and busts. The same people who decry the theory of evolution are quite happy to refer to the survival of the fittest and adaptation when it comes to the capitalist economic system. Surely the misery that's apparently compulsory on a cyclic basis in capitalism isn't something we have to put up with?

 

[AllieBaba]

Mindless rabble.

 

[Toro]

What's most interesting about the deregulation rhetoric among US conservatives is how silent it is on the issues surrounding the Corporate Welfare State so alive and well in situations like the Bear-Stearns fiasco.

apparently, socialism is just fine with the free-market orthodoxy under the right circumstances.

"The only socialism that seems acceptable in the United States is socialism for the rich."

- JK Galbraith

 

[AllieBaba]

Which makes absolutely no sense at all. Just more mindless drivel.

 

[8236]

And your learned opinion would be what? Simply posting vacant non-opinions is not very interesting. Or are you just bored and uniterested in the topic?

 

[jreeves]

I completely agree.

The market creates the most wealth for the most people most of the time. (It does not create all the wealth for all the people all of the time.) Thus, it is the engine of growth.

However, sometimes the market veers off course. The government should be there to make sure it stays on course. Increasing regulation that increases transparency and information for the consumer is the single best thing the government can do to help the market.

Never heard of Sarbanes-Oxley, the SEC....

 

[Toro]

Never heard of Sarbanes-Oxley, the SEC....

Yes. Sarb-Ox and the SEC have increased transparency to the financial markets. That is a specific example I was thinking about. I've read hundreds of 10Ks and 10Qs. The government's laws to increase transparency increases the smooth functioning of the financial markets.

We are in this economic mess because of a lack of transparency. Banks don't know what other banks hold because nobody knows what other banks hold, and many of the structured products are opaque, with investors not knowing what the underlying securities are in which they have invested. Because of this, many CDOs, CDO-squareds, CDO-cubed, etc., are unanalyzable. The market did a very poor job of disciplining the release of information.

We are also in this economic mess because the investment banks have far less regulation of their capital ratios than the commercial banks. Bear Stearns would not have collapsed had they had more equity. Ten years ago, Bear Stearns assets to equity was 20:1, meaning that every $1 in equity supported $20 in liabilities. Today, Bear is 33:1. Or 3% of Bear's balance sheet is equity. That is why it will seize to exist.

And because of this wonderfully opaque financial system, the Fed had to bail out Bear Stearns because they feared a financial collapse since Bear had derivative counterparty risk of something like $7 trillion, half the GDP of the United States.

Oh, BTW, did I mention that the government interfered in the market and bailed out Bear Stearns?

 

[KungFusion]

"Surely the misery that's apparently compulsory on a cyclic basis in capitalism isn't something we have to put up with?"

Well, i fear it might be, the economy of any free state will always be like the weather, and the economy of a free planet is likely to be even moreso.

 

[Diuretic]

Then we might need to invent another system that isn't a command economy but which doesn't need to break down every few years to make sure it works. I mean if capitalism was a plane you wouldn't fly in it would you?

 

[KungFusion]

Hell, some days if life were a plane i might not fly it either - but it's not a plane. If the system were as compactly containable and mechanically managable as a jet engine that would be great, but i strongly doubt that it is or ever could be. I mean, the "scientific" approach to building utopia has never really gotten humanity very far . . . and the historical dialectic is about as reliable as any other religious scripture.

 

[Truthmatters]

Progressing forward to a solution has always been what man has done. No reason to stop now.

Capitalism with rules to keep it from turning into a monopoly is what we have now. It just breaks down from time to time because idiots keep pretending we dont really need the rules and take them away. Then we have to reinstate them all over again. Wake up and reinstate them and learn to tell people who pretend we dont need them to fuck off.

 

[Diuretic]

The use of the plane metaphor was to illustrate a point and not to be taken literally.

As for the propensity of capitalism to break now and again, rules and regulations won't stop it, it's inbuilt into the system. There are short term booms and busts and there are long waves of boom and bust. The point is to remove this tendency and the only way to do that is to modify capitalism until it's something else.

 

[KungFusion]

"The use of the plane metaphor was to illustrate a point and not to be taken literally."

Understood - but the point of where i was going with the 'sometimes i wouldn't even choose to fly the plane of life' quip (also not meant to be taken literally) is that the instinct whereby we react to what you accurately point out are the perennial boom / bust cycles associated with free markets by systematically purging them of all their associated risks is also the same instinct whereby we sacrifice our civil liberties in the name of security. The economy, like life itself, is not just choosing to fly or not to fly; the risks are built in, no matter which approach you take, and when we try to insulate ourselves from them we usually end up in as equally a compromised position as that in which we began back when we still had all our liberties and faced the initial risks. You reach a certain point where you can't eliminate risk anymore, you can only displace it, shift it around.

So when you say we need to modify capitalism until it becomes something else, i can't help but adopt a skeptical stance and wonder what direction youre suggesting we move in . . . ? Managing markets is one thing, entirely transforming them raises serious doubts (as well as all sorts of unpleasant historical associations . . .)

maybe i'm just jumping to conclusions about what youre suggesting, though . . .

 

[Truthmatters]

I perfer to think of it as modifying Capitalism until it can help us sustain a decent world in which that vast majority do not have to suffer great pains to sustain the commerce level.

As it is now we have cycles where people are convinced that regulations on the market are killing it. Then you end up with too little regulation on the market and the raping begins anew.

It time to learn the task of perfecting the regulations instead of just applying them and then removing them.

I think we as a world are starting to learn this lesson.

Even Cuba is starting to ecperiment with giving people small plots of land to Run farms free of government intervention. They can now have cell phones if they can afford them. Russia and China are falling in love with the free market.

Its time the US moves to the middle too.

If the world can come from all directions toward each other we can learn the lessons more effectively and hopefully meet in the middle and find a sustainable balance.