Mr. Greenspan gave testimony on Capitol Hill before the House Oversight Committee concerning the economic meltdown that ravaged the country. This was the takeaway:
"I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms."
In other words, despite all logic to the contrary, people cannot be trusted to do what is in their own best interest.
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History proves that capitalism is the only system that can produce prosperity by fueling the engine of productivity. But when the rules of the marketplace become the values of the street, then the law of the jungle waits right around the corner.
DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE
So what defines our best interest: fostering a morally healthy society or grabbing all we can before someone else grabs it first? The answer should be obvious. But we know it isn't so.
People only do what is in their own best interest when they recognize what that best interest truly is. Objectively, we all want to live in a world built on kindness and justice. But human beings are not objective creatures, and our base impulses incline us toward self-indulgence. Only with discipline and wisdom can we harness our appetites.
America's Founding Fathers knew this all too well when they designed the legal infrastructure of our country. They recognized that the Constitution would only ensure freedom in the hands of responsible custodians and judicious practitioners. Here are just a few of their insights:
John Adams: Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
Benjamin Rush: Without [religion] there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments.
Noah Webster: All the miseries and evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery, and war, proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible.
George Washington: Religion and morality are the essential pillars of civil society.
James Wilson: Human law must rest its authority ultimately upon the authority of that law which is divine. . . . Far from being rivals or enemies, religion and law are twin sisters, friends, and mutual assistants.
Benjamin Franklin: [O]nly a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.
Of course, it was the study of religious philosophy that enlightened these men of wisdom, even one as irreligious as Ben Franklin. They didn't merely point to scripture; they studied it and allowed its teachings to inform their reasoning and shape their opinions.
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Most certainly, they knew and took to heart the warnings of King Solomon when he said, Like an open, unwalled city is a man who cannot restrain his desire. It's not hard to imagine what these wise men would say about a modern world in which everything has become acceptable in the name of tolerance, where accountability is repudiated in the name of charity, and where traditional boundaries of virtue are torn down in pursuit of utopian egalitarianism. They knew that moral anarchy would be the inevitable outcome of unbridled freedom.
Even if we recognize that economic pragmatism must govern the marketplace, we've also seen what happens when the impulses of human avarice are given free rein. True freedom can only survive if we remember that there are some things worth more than money, and that our own best interest can never be served at the expense of others
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0317/g ... omics.php3
Regards,
George Clay