Capitalismo (Continuación)

InternacionalEconomía

When presidents of the United States make reassuring statements about the stock market, investors with any historic memory prepare to run for the hills. The most famous example was Herbert Hoover after the 1929 crash: “The business of America is sound.”

Last week global stock markets fell heavily. On Friday President Bush commented that: “The world economy is strong.” Until that point, I felt fairly sure that what was happening in stock markets was a relatively minor correction, a response of the equity markets to the problems of the debt markets. Now I am not so sure. President Bush has shaken my confidence in the world economy.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesPensamiento, Cultura y Ciencia

For nearly two decades, the Thatcherite dictum that "there is no alternative" has been used to stifle serious challenge to the way the world is run, and right now there seems to be an increasingly urgent insistence that there is only one possible social and economic future for us all. It isn't just the hard men of the moneyed right asserting that capitalism is the only way to order human affairs. Liberals are also now unshakeably convinced that there can be no alternative to capitalism - unless perhaps it is a collapse into some variety of barbarism.

Timothy Garton Ash recently declared here that "global capitalism now has no serious rivals - but it could destroy itself" while Martin Kettle pronounced socialism incontrovertibly dead with no prospect of a second coming.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesPensamiento, Cultura y Ciencia

What is the elephant in all our rooms? It is the global triumph of capitalism. Democracy is fiercely disputed. Freedom is under threat even in old-established democracies such as Britain. Western supremacy is on the skids. But everyone does capitalism. Americans and Europeans do it. Indians do it. Russian oligarchs and Saudi princes do it. Even Chinese communists do it. And now the members of Israel's oldest kibbutz, that last best hope of egalitarian socialism, have voted to introduce variable salaries based on individual performance. Karl Marx would be turning in his grave. Or perhaps not, since some of his writings eerily foreshadowed our era of globalised capitalism.…  Seguir leyendo »