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screams the tagline of an "intellectual" on gtalk
"Russia turns capitalist in 1991, US turns Socialist in 2008" says another
The last three weeks has seen some phenomenal action on the international arena. Names that popped up were Lehmann, Merill, AIG then came the surrender of Goldman and Morgan and WaMu was the final part of a the proverbial "sinking ship" which sucked the living breath of the entire financial world.
While people cry hoarse over the actions of the US govt and the appropriateness thereof, just sit back and look at it in an impartial manner.
Let us go back to the fundamentals - thousands of years back, when man(rather homo sapiens) discovered the fire, was it a perfected art. Nay. To this day, there are improvisations. This is the case with all human ingenuity - improvisations, adaptability and learnability. The principle of capitalism or socialism is no different.
That socialism died is more a fault of human impatience rather than the flaw in the philosophy. Mind you, Lenin's socialism ( i am told) did talk of graduation from state control to privatization. I am reasonably led to believe in that view point as I do not know of any philosophy that is bereft of any incentives - from sex to spirituality.
I am not a master of capitalist philosophy but I do know that distortions have always existed - take for instance the concepts of tax, tax subsidy and in the policy of price support ( the last one comes to the front page during WTO summits,watch out) which is followed even in the Mecca of capitalism (oops sorry Vatican of capitalism, to be politically right) the US.
And back home, the recent proposals to relax the ECB norms for the telecom sector to USD 500 mn as against the cap of USD 100 mn. You may call this corruption, I choose "restricted/ limited/contained socialism." (I intend to patent all 3 terms)
The next comes bundling(some call it bungling, that's also partly true) spectrum allocation with service provisioning. Even this license is not auctioned as should be the case in free market but alloted. What is the basis? First come first serve. Is this not blatant government control??
Beneath this is the precept close to Shobha De " The Greatest common good". Which is what the Government is doing. It is doing what it thinks is the greatest common good.
So that brings us to the question - " Who knows what is the GCG" for this is not math to be computed. The answer - "Decision makers' beliefs and capabilities to convince others to bring them to the table. Decision makers at that point in time matter.
The Glass Steagall Act was passsed as it was believed by the decision makers that such a move would prevent a bank run or crises of confidence in future. That was intervention. It worked and for 60 years. Then it was scrapped and came the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. Along with SoX Act, it was supposed to bring in more transparency into the system and prevent any mishaps in the financial industry.
But coming to the point, the government of today feels that the wall between the two should fall for the improvement of the financial services. The argument against plenty but net net the thought process has changed. Will this avert another crisis. Time alone can say.
So, what's the conclusion. Well it boils down to Darwin's theory of evolution, natural selection et al.... is the answer.
