I wish we had more people like British MEP Daniel Hannan here in the United States. This guy gets it. Listen to this ten minute speech he delivered at The Oxford Union during an Occupy Wall Street debate. He explained in quite simple terms the difference between capitalism and corporatism.
He opened by saying that the big bank bailouts were a generational crime where low and middle income people were required to rescue bankers and bondholders from the consequences of their actions. He said that the financial market meltdown happened due to a breakdown in the democratic process.
Hannan challenged three myths about the financial collapse. 1-That it was a failure of capitalism. 2-That it was due to a lack of regulation. 3-That the world’s financial problems are due to human greed.
“I can’t believe I’m having to come to The Oxford Union and explain that subsidies and nationalizations are the opposite of capitalism. And yet that seems to be the contention of the Occupy crowd. In a capitalist system, bad banks would have failed, their profitable operations would have been sold to more efficient competitors, bondholders would have lost money, shareholders would have lost money, some depositors would have lost money. Taxpayers would not have contributed a penny. The failure of a business and its replacement by a rival is not a sign that the capitalist system isn’t working, it’s a sign that the capitalist system is working. Just as you weed your garden to make space for new growth, it’s precisely that replacement of inefficiant old producers by better new ones that has raised humanity to the highest standard of living we have ever enjoyed.”
The speech is chock-full of great quotes like that one, especially his advice regarding the banks the people should be marching on and occupying.
“Don’t occupy Wall Street, don’t occupy the London Stock Exchange… Occupy the central banks that have printed the money in order to get around the failures of a handful of banksters. Occupy the houses of the politicians who voted to give your money to people who were not prepared to live with the consequences of their own errors.”
Watch the whole video. Maybe if we can make it go viral the establishment Republican politicians here in the United States will get wind of it and learn a thing or two.
I agree with the LonelyConservative that this Britain has a better understanding of capitalism than most of our politicians. A consolidated, centralized government does not make a good venture capitalist and the Federal Reserve isn’t working for Americans. His debating opponent was Cornell West; that must have been animated.
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[...] for them, the Democrats’ overreach is waking people up.Update: Maybe our side should just be like Daniel Hannan all the time, every waking moment of their lives.Tweetvaso linkgoogle_ad_client = [...]
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Paralyzed by their own fear of the LMSM, it’s unfortunate that we don’t have an American conservative to articulate as well as Mr. Hannan.
Progressives come in all political stripes. This was a classic that was dreamed up by W’s, Hank Paulson, Democrat http://townhall.com/columnists/robertnovak/2007/10/01/hank_paulsons_dna/page/full/
to basically, nationalize the banking system using threats of economic collapse if we didn’t do so. Progressives’ use of fear and intimidation wins again.
“I’ve abandoned free market principles to save the free market system”- G.W. Bush, December 2008.
That statement alone should have tipped any American off that there was a bit of poop in the stew.
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In 2008, the Federal Reserve swindled the American people with a classic “bait and switch”:
Henry Paulson had told Bush and told Congress that what we needed to keep the financial system from collapsing was for the Government to buy up the toxic financial instruments–such as derivatives–that were now near worthless.
After Congress passed the TARP law authorizing this, Paulson and Bernanke at the Fed turned right around, and instead just handed out hundreds of billions of dollars of direct bailouts to the banks, no strings attached.
For example, Bank of America got a $20 billion bailout. Three years later, in 2011, BofA announced that they’re phasing out 30,000 American jobs and setting up shop in the Philippines.
Maybe they should rename it “Bank of Philippines”.
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[...] Don’t Occupy Wall Street, Occupy The Central Banks – Lonely Conservative [...]
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[...] Daniel Hannan: Don't Occupy Wall Street, Occupy The Central Banks [...]
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