Good article Dilbert. I've only gotten through Israel so far, looking forward to reading about India and the UK after work. What's striking from this is the initial success of "socialism", as the government starts to spend loads of money, followed by stagnation and failure when effects of shrinking the private sector and starving it of investment are realized.
I'd argue that capitalism has lifted billions out of poverty and made the world a much better place.
First, you need to make a distinction between crony capitalism and free market capitalism. An example of the former are the high tariffs imposed by countries in the 1930's, and other kinds of support showered by politicians and governments on their favorites. The tariffs didn't set off the Great Depression, but they made it worse.
Second, and more importantly, many of the failures you might want to blame on free market capitalism should be blamed on bad government policy. With respect to the Great Depression, the government should have increased the money supply, cut taxes, provided liquidity to the banks and started spending more money earlier. Prior to 2008/2009, we should have had better regulation of financial institutions, especially the people handing out mortgages, and perhaps the Fed should have been on the stick raising interest rates before asset prices got out of hand. These were failings of government, not the capitalists. Originally Posted by Tiny
the FED was largely responsible for the great depression. we didn't need a central bank before it, and we certainly don't need one now.
the Fed is one of the biggest currency manipulator abuser, next to China.