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+ Earlybird updated Friday, November 6, 2009 

Economy: G-20 To Meet About Continuing Financial Support

• "The Group of 20 leading nations will agree this weekend it is too early to pull the plug on emergency support for the global economy and launch a new system of checks to help rebalance world growth and prevent future crises," Reuters reports. "British finance minister Alistair Darling is hosting the third meeting of G20 finance ministers and central bankers this year in St Andrews, Scotland" today, "aiming to put flesh on the bones of agreements made at a leaders' summit in Pittsburgh in September."

• "A senior House Democrat said Thursday he would push to extend unemployment insurance benefits through all of 2010 before the end of this year, when the eligibility window for new enrollees will shut down or begin to phase out for existing beneficiaries," CongressDailyAM (subscription) reports. "The projected cost of such a program is potentially $80 billion to $85 billion, according to preliminary estimates."

• "No large financial firm should be too big to fail, said two members of the U.S. Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee," Bloomberg News reports. Republican Bob Corker of Tennessee and Democrat Mark Warner of Virginia "are sponsoring legislation to give the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. the authority to force large bank holding companies into receivership. Any firm that benefits from a government-funded orderly wind-down would be required to close its doors permanently to avoid a perpetual series of government bailouts."

Monday, December 22, 2008

Is Capitalism The Fuel Of Democracy?

The crisis has led to some expectation that free market reforms around the world may pause or even reverse in the near term. If so, what does this portend for the spread of democracy? Roger Altman tackles this subject in Foreign Affairs here. Is the link between capitalism and democracy as strong as it seemed in the 1990s?

-- John Maggs, NationalJournal.com

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Responded on December 22, 2008 11:03 AM

Charles Calomiris, Professor of Financial Institutions, Columbia University

The whole premise of this question is strange. Democracy is a process, not an outcome. It of course can survive and has survived in the absence of capitalism. Indeed, one of the earliest forms of democracy that evolved in ancient Greece (in Sparta) was completely antagonistic to capitalism.   Capitalism matters (beyond its obvious material advantages, noted by economic historians) because it is the "fuel" of economic freedom, and economic freedom is necessary to any meaningful conception of individual freedom, as philosophers and historians have long noted. Individual freedom is the outcome that matters. Democracy has generally been a necessary condition to produce freedom, but if democracy is employed as an instrument to create state control over the economic lives of individuals (as in India until recently), then it is no longer achieving its goal. Democracy, as Enlightenment philosophers from Britain noted (especially Burke), can be the enemy of freedom. Indeed, democracy can itself become a form of tyrrany. Some of our founders (...

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The whole premise of this question is strange. Democracy is a process, not an outcome. It of course can survive and has survived in the absence of capitalism. Indeed, one of the earliest forms of democracy that evolved in ancient Greece (in Sparta) was completely antagonistic to capitalism.   Capitalism matters (beyond its obvious material advantages, noted by economic historians) because it is the "fuel" of economic freedom, and economic freedom is necessary to any meaningful conception of individual freedom, as philosophers and historians have long noted. Individual freedom is the outcome that matters. Democracy has generally been a necessary condition to produce freedom, but if democracy is employed as an instrument to create state control over the economic lives of individuals (as in India until recently), then it is no longer achieving its goal. Democracy, as Enlightenment philosophers from Britain noted (especially Burke), can be the enemy of freedom. Indeed, democracy can itself become a form of tyrrany. Some of our founders (Hamilton and Washington and Adams) understood this; others (Jefferson) did not.   Freedom is an ultimate good, as the great Western philosophers and theologians recognized, because it is necessary to allow each soul to find and choose the right path. The elevation of the dignity of the individual, and the importance of his/her choices is the fundamental concept that sets Western philosophy and religion apart.   Of course, everybody already knows this, or at least, should.

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