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> Bailing out banks and hoping they will spend it on industry just after they bankrupted themselves by gambling shows an unquestioning and total belief in the i
by ef4 12y ago
> Bailing out banks and hoping they will spend it on industry just after they bankrupted themselves by gambling shows an unquestioning and total belief in the institutions of capital.
On the contrary, it betrays deep distrust in the actual institutions of capitalism: market prices and bankruptcy.
"Institutions of capital" cannot just mean "the people who hold the capital", because by that definition every oligarch since prehistory was a capitalist. That contradicts even Marx, who saw capitalism as a distinct modern development.
- lotsofmangos 12y agoI was using the phrase to specifically mean the organisations that structurally underpin modern capitalist economies and have now come to represent it. Sorry if I did not make that clear enough from context. Now you can argue that what happened was bad economic theory, however the intent behind bailing out the banks was not to steer away from capitalism, but to prop it up, so even if you think it stinks from an economic theory perspective, it was at least intended as capitalist.