Thursday, October 02, 2008

The socialization of risk and the privatization of reward

Heard the above phrase from Wall Street historian Steve Fraser on NPR yesterday. Quite a concise and accurate description of the current financial crisis, isn't it?

4 comments:

Krishnan said...

Hari, is this quote is in the context of the current economic meltdown ?

Hari said...

Yes, Krishnan, it is - I've mentioned it more directly now.

Anonymous said...

Your subject really is the catch phrase these days. It looks like this was inevitable since capitalism suffers from the crisis of overproduction. Capitalism tries to overcome this crisis through globalization by making structural changes in the economy of the poor countries (3rd world) through the free market doctrine of IMF and World Bank. One element of structural change is removal of constraints on the movement of capital even while maintaining controls on the movement of labour. And it is a known fact that capital is very volatile since it is fed by speculation. It works on rumors and self-fulfilling prophecies which end up resulting in flight of capital to safety (U.S. T-Bills). This is what we saw in Asian Financial Crisis in 97. Same happened in Mexican financial crisis in 94-95, Russian financial crisis in 98 and Argentina's crisis 01. Such meltdowns are followed by the stoking up of emotions and usually some amount regulation on the financial sector. Democratic candidate Obama talks about strengthening of regulation and vouches his party does not believe in the philosophy of the Republicans which is a staunch supporter of free markets. But by labeling this situation on the Conservatives rule from 2000 to 08, he conveniently overlooks the fact his party's contribution to breaking the chains of regulation by passing through bills like the ones which resulted in the repeal of the glass seagall act. And it boils down to the fact that the two party system breds birds of same feather, with one party being an extreme right conservative and the other one being less conservative but still on the right!!

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