Gordon Brown’s solution : “ethical” markets

Writing is today’s Daily Torygraph, he begins by buttering up his Tory readers assuring them that he too is pro-capitalist:

“I admire the market's ability to release the dynamism and enterprise of people and so this new Labour government is pro-business and pro-markets and always will be.”

He then goes on to say that he doesn’t believe in “unbridled free markets” (a rather odd term since if something is “free” then surely it is “unbridled” ?). So he wants to “bridle” free-market capitalism (not that he dares to use the c-word) . . . by ethics, those his father preached as a Presbyterian minister in the local kirk: “fairness, stewardship cooperation” :

“Markets work best when underpinned by an ethic of fairness. The institutions of the market place need to be founded on the ethic of stewardship. And this new interdependent global economy cannot work for the world's people without an ethic of cooperation.”

Markets certainly can and do work without being underpinned by any “ethic” save that of getting the best price and making the most money. They are completely impersonal and work according to the principles of “can’t pay, can’t have” and “no profit, no production”. If Brown thinks his appeal to market operators to apply Presbyterian ethics in their dealings will be heeded he’s just a fool. How in fact this man has achieved a reputation for being a financial and economic genius is hard to understand. His claim to have engineered the end of boom-and-bust cycles has just blown up in his face as Britain and the rest of the world are now faced with the biggest bust for 80 years. And now he is proposing “ethical markets” as the way out.

His “ethical market economy” will go down in history as a joke to rival the “ethical foreign policy” preached by his fellow Scotsman, the late Robin Cook.

ALB