Rhenish Capitalism: The man with the cigar and "father of the economic miracle"
Ludwig Erhard (Foto: picture-alliance / Sven Simon)
There are always alternatives
 
Berlin, Germany - Thursday, October 9, 2008 by: Bernd Frank
 

After reading your article "Failure of the economic system, Part II" and some of the mentioned links (R. B. Bennett, Roosevelt's New Deal) I remembered an interview on the German Tagesschau website, Tagesschau is part of ARD, one of the two German federal public broadcasting systems. The article mentions the "Rheinischer Kapitalismus", nothing less than a different notion for a social market economy.

May be a social market economy is something that we need, not only in western European countries but also in countries like the United States and Canada.

Together with an open market it brought prosperity and continuity to a lot of Europe's countries, at least until free market economy and pure capitalism took more and more over.

The interview castigates the mentality (in an independent banking system) of an annual yield of 25 % plus X, instead of quality in production seen in the long term and lasting. And for that, you need, a long term perspective, instead of the greed for short term big money, or "devil-may-care", as we say.

Unfortunately, I fear that there is nobody to listen, much less to act.

 
Bernd Frank
 

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