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+ Earlybird updated Friday, November 20, 2009 

Economy: Federal Watchdog Can't Vouch For Administration Job Numbers

• "The government watchdog overseeing the federal stimulus program testified Thursday that he could not vouch for the Obama administration's recent claims that the money had saved or created 640,000 jobs. He suggested that the administration should have treated the number with more skepticism," the New York Times reports. "Earl E. Devaney, the chairman of the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, said... up to 10 percent of the recipients had not filed the required reports showing how many jobs they had created or saved."

• "As he readies an overhaul of the nation's financial regulatory system, House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank," D-Mass., "is already looking at avenues to revise the package before it goes to the floor the week of Dec. 7," CongressDailyAM (subscription) reports. "At the top of the list is revisiting language his panel approved Thursday that would give sweeping powers to the GAO to audit the Federal Reserve."

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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