NO INVESTING DEMOCRACY, NO DEMOCRACY.
In the economic system as it is in the USA, bankers, by deciding who gets the money, create the economy. And the question is, once they are done, does this economy do anything the People want, or even anything the People need? The latest crisis, and the state of the present economy of the USA show that the answer to both is a resounding no. One has just to look at: decaying health care, deindustrialization, and a median income stagnant or going down for decades, and an economy that is losing its comparative advantages in so many ways that it is incapable of maintaining its independence.
Hence the economy is too important to be left to bankers. Somehow the place of the state (hopefully elected by the People, not bankers) has to grow. So the question becomes: how do you control plutocracy, once it has got out of control? It is not easy. Once the influence of private interests on government has grown enough, very little stop them.
An extraneous example: eleven French engineers were killed by a bomb in Pakistan. It was assumed that it was Al Qaeda. But yesterday two French antiterrorist judges informed the families that it was actually agents of the Pakistani government, who were unsatisfied by how much money they got under the table, that did the deed.
The point: after some degree of expectation is reached, the powerful will not be held by anything, to keep getting the power they view as their due. Back to the USA: ten days ago or so, a Congressman said in the New York Times about bankers and Congress: "They run the place".
When moral expectations are too low for the main economic actors, one gets an economy that has no morality.
To fix that, moral standards have to rise again. A place to start is by limiting compensation. In Europe, main street is asking for it, just as in Iran main street is asking for the right to change the government. But what is main street asking for in the USA? Did it get bad enough yet? In Iran, or Europe, people know that a government not representing them can make things turn immensely bad in daily life.
But the population of the USA does not have such collective painful memory. So the Obama administration is in a difficult position, trying to impose on bankers something the People did not ask for.
Plus, a major problem is that international corporations are able to declare profits in low tax jurisdictions (part of the tax heaven problem). A triage of what needs to be addressed first is of the essence. By inventing new methods for limiting the powers of rich individuals overseas first (fixing the tax heavens abroad), it may be just a question of translating them back in the USA (fixing the compensation heavens at home).
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
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