Lamentable discurso (pdf) de David Cameron en Davos. Vladimir Putin suena bastante menos intervencionista que el líder del Partido Conservador británico. La prensa thatcherista inglesa y los comentaristas liberales se le están echando al cuello por un discurso a medio camino entre el "CHANGE" de Obama y el "conservadurismo compasivo" de Bush (en el caso de Cameron, "moral capitalism" o "capitalism with a conscience"), una caja de pandora de intervencionismo.
Destaco varios fragmentos del discurso (énfasis mío):
[A]s the full scale of this crisis has emerged, some of our long-held economic assumptions have simply fallen away. So now we are forced to re-consider the old economic orthodoxy. To question its assumptions about monetary policy; its rules on fiscal policy, and its faith in the virtue of free-market capitalism. And the key question we should be asking is this. Which of the old rules should we keep, and which – in these extraordinary times – should we discard? (...)
So when it comes to monetary policy, yes I do believe the old rules should be torn up. Radical monetary activism is what the economy needs. We’ve got to take all the necessary steps to restore confidence in our banking system and get credit flowing again. That’s why my party supported a recapitalisation of British banks. It’s why we proposed a National Loan Guarantee Scheme to underwrite bank lending to business. It’s why we support the principle of insuring banks’ losses for a fee - though the devil is in the details. And it’s why, as a last resort, we might have to consider quantitative easing too. Because our exceptional monetary problems demand exceptional monetary solutions.(...)
I’ve got nothing against the idea of a fiscal stimulus. I think it’s a good idea – if your country can afford it.(...) Instead, each country should use fiscal policy to do whatever it responsibly can to stimulate its economy. Sadly, thanks to a decade of fiscal irresponsibility, the current British government can’t afford to do very much. (...)
That is what I mean by responsible business. Business helping to create a society that is greener, safer, fairer - and where opportunity is more equal. Business helping to create a society that is more family-friendly, where responsibility and power are decentralised, and where we value and build up the institutions of the public realm and civic society. (...)
It’s time to help create vibrant, local economies – even if that means standing in the way of the global corporate juggernauts. And it’s time to decentralise economic power, to spread opportunity and wealth and ownership more equally through society and that will mean, as some have put it, recapitalising the poor rather than just the banks.
