NYTimes | Guildhall
at the heart of the City can be a lulling sort of place after a long
day. The statuary and vaulted timber ceiling of the medieval great hall
lead the eye to wander and the mind to muse on Britain’s strangest quirk
— its centuries of continuity. Grace is said, claret is served, glasses
clink and dreaminess sets in. A keynote speech from a central banker is
all that is required to complete the soporific effect.
Or
so one would think, until Mark Carney, the Canadian governor of the
Bank of England, lays into unfettered capitalism. “Just as any
revolution eats its children,” he says, “unchecked market fundamentalism
can devour the social capital essential for the long-term dynamism of
capitalism itself.”
All
ideologies, he continues, are prone to extremes. Belief in the power of
the market entered “the realm of faith” before the 2008 meltdown.
Market economies became market societies. They were characterized by
“light-touch regulation” and “the belief that bubbles cannot be
identified.”
Carney
pulls no punches. Big banks were too big to fail, operating in a
“heads-I-win-tails-you-lose bubble.” Benchmarks were rigged for personal
gain. Equity markets blatantly favored “the technologically empowered
over the retail investor.” Mistrust grew — and persists.
“Prosperity
requires not just investment in economic capital, but investment in
social capital,” Carney argues, having defined social capital as “the
links, shared values and beliefs in a society which encourage
individuals not only to take responsibility for themselves and their
families but also to trust each other and work collaboratively to
support each other.”
A
stirring through the hall, a focusing of gazes — Carney has the
attention of the chief executives, bankers and investors gathered here
for a conference on “Inclusive Capitalism.” His bluntness reflects the
fact that, six years after the crisis, the core problem has not gone
away: The deep unease and anger in developed countries about the ways
globalization and technology magnify returns for the super-rich,
operating in a world of low taxation and lax regulation where short-term
gain becomes a guiding principle, even as societies become more
unequal, offering diminished opportunities to the young, less community
and a growing sense of unfairness.
Anyone
seeking the source of the anger behind populist movements in Europe and
the United States (and the Piketty fever) need look no further than
this. Anti-immigration, anti-Europe movements won in European elections
because people feel cheated, worried about their children. As Bill
Clinton noted a couple of hours before Carney’s speech, the first
reaction of human beings who feel “insecure and under stress” is the
urge to “hang with our own kind.” And the world’s greatest challenge is
defining “the terms of our interdependence.”
3 comments:
This sounds pretty bad. "C'mon guys. We have to play fair." What makes anyone think they're going to listen after all this time? Preaching to them at this point is a waste of time.
Utility and efficacy of that 1% meme. They're concerned, and have to put on a show of being concerned, because so many of the middle-class peasant natives have begun to grow restless.
Exactly, it's time to pick up rocks...
http://youtu.be/aIc3iMrXq9M
Post a Comment