Are the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators half-baked Communists, prepared to pull down the economic system of American when they are not taking drugs or displaying sex play in public? No they are not.
The alarmists will be disappointed if they look upon this movement with tinted glasses. They are trying to see the ‘mob’ at work to get rid of capitalism but on quite the contrary – the cry is for a return to restore the fundamental principles of capitalism; one of these principles is accountability.
In fact this is a great opportunity to save capitalism from the pseudo capitalists.
Capitalism is the only way to better standards of living. But recently some of the financial entities have decided to sleep on featherbeds laid out by the government. Their base is socialism but meant only for the tycoons; capitalism is for the others. They cannot be blamed; being human they are grabbing more than what is their fair share. This has led to featherbedding by both the unions as well as the tycoons; both groups are impeding the growth of proper market economy.
The time is ripe for the finance ministers of countries like Indonesia, South Korea and Thailand to denounce the crony capitalism of America today. In the 1990’s they were regarded to be the symbols of crony capitalism by American officials. In a speech in 1998 August Lawrence Summers who was at that time deputy secretary to the Treasury said, “In Asia, the problems related to ‘crony capitalism’ are at the heart of this crisis, and that is why structural reforms must be a major part” of any solution that IMF would craft.
The American analysis of the crisis in Asia was correct. The countries that were involved were capitalists in name only. What was required was the creation of accountability and markets that were competitive.
USA today is rocking in the same boat.
Capitalism as a system has been successful because of inner disciple that permits loss and even also bankruptcy. It’s this risk factor of failure that gives the opportunity for victory. But many of mega banks are thought to be too big to fail – thus they can make private profits but socialize the risks.
The result is that the financial entities sharpen their tools hunting for mega profits laced with bonuses.
Julie Thompson, has been working on ForeclosureDataOnline.com studying the foreclosures market, helping buyers on the finer points of Santee foreclosed homes for sale.