Rädda kapitalismen från bankirerna

Philip Coggan är Buttonwood-krönikören i The Economist. Varför Buttonwood ? Jo: Buttonwood Agreement (17 May 1792), created the organization which became the New York Stock Exchange. Så enkelt var det.

I sin senaste krönika konstaterar han att det är bankerna – den finansiella industrin – som förstört kapitalismens rykte:

In the past 30 years or so, capitalism has become associated less with businesses operating in a competitive market, and more with the banking sector. The best and the brightest of society’s graduates have flocked to investment banking. Financial capitalism is inherently less appealing. It produces not iPads, but complex structured products with obscure acronyms. And when governments and central banks are forced to step in to rescue the titans of finance, the idea of a free market also goes out the window. A system that privatises profits and nationalises losses is impossible to justify.

All this matters because voters are in an ugly mood, perhaps because they have not enjoyed real-wage growth in recent years. That marks a change from the 1980s and 1990s when advanced economies enjoyed steady economic growth, encouraging parties of the centre-left to adopt market-friendly policies.

The risk now is that voters back parties that pursue policies which damage trade and investment, and make the developed world’s problems even worse. The reverberations of the financial crisis make it hard for mainstream parties to fight back. Somehow, capitalism, for want of a better word, must be rescued from the bankers.

Om Coggan återkommer med förslag på hur den räddningsaktionen ska gå till återkommer jag snarast. En möjlig alternativ strategi – möjligen knepigarare ? – vore att förklara varför den finansiella industrin skapar välstånd också den. Men efter finanskrisen är det inte helt lätt….Vad säger Thomas Östros ?