Comments on: The oft-maligned Bill Gates on “creative capitalism”

By: Guy

Guy — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 08:10:54 +0000

Indeed – good point in particular on “regulation”. A few years ago “regulation” was a negative word… this latest crisis may have just turned it into a positive word.

By: GB

GB — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 07:19:10 +0000

I apologise to Bill Gates’s Dad for the incorect use of an apostrophe – I can only plead sleepiness.

I know “The City”, that is the financial sector, is all-powerful in Britain, but I think that may change a bit. As part of the Anglophone world we tend to follow the prevailing economic ideas in the US and UK, and I find it amazing that, in the finance area at least, the word “regulation” suddenly seems to have taken on the aura that “free market” once had.

I wouldn’t advocate strict regulation of every nook and cranny of the economy, but for crying out loud how may times do we have to learn the same lesson when it comes to the shenanigans of the finance industry?

And I notice that many US commentators are picking up on the fact that, at root, the subprime mess has been caused by the massive inequality in the US.

By: Guy

Guy — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 00:16:16 +0000

Already we are seeing what we might describe as “old left” measures (e.g. nationalisation) being applied in order to solve in the short-term some of the problems that the sub-prime crisis and financial markets are throwing up. Although I expect that there is a pretty high probability that every crash we have is going to be cancelled out by an equivalent bounce as investors seek bargains in the market, I am sure that people recognise now that even “old left” measures should not be considered anathema today if the conditions demand it.

Off the top of my head I can’t think of any prominent folks who have moved from the right to the left in the UK just now. Unfortunately over there, David Cameron is considered to be something of a renaissance man by the conservatives; they are quite infatuated with him and his boiler-plate economic rationalism.

By: GB

GB — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 09:44:53 +0000

I understand Gate’s dad wrote a book defending the progressive tax system.

To get way off the subject, it’s hard to avoid thinking about the financial implosion and what it means politically. It could mean a very rough time for the Rudd Government , but I can’t help thinking that at a broad international level this will result in a turn to the left in economic thinking, and that Australia will almost inevitably follow this trend.

And I was thinking about the number of political writers and intellectuals that have moved from right to left – people like Robert Manne here or Michael Lind in the US. Did you notice when you were in the UK any writers who’ve moved to the left, Guy? I understand Will Hutton was something of a Thatcherite at one stage.

Anyone else think of any names? I have a feeling that a steady trickle might grow substantially in the next few years.