Capitalism Has Its Elitists Too

The Pink Foreign Business Newspaper offers what I feel is a measured, yet typical, critique of the recent analysis by the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation (background here). While the critique makes some reasonable points, i.e. don't let London grabbing the Rosneft deal throw us into a panic, and the tone is measured in its reaction, the subtle signals are there. To wit, this is not a good faith effort to analyze what is legitimately seen as a loss of US competitiveness, it is a Bush administration scheme, a "misplaced juggernaut" (after all, as all right-thinking people know, what isn't misplaced or juggernautic about anything the Bush administration does?) to "revitalize" something gone awry. More on point is the title reference to "race to the bottom." This is the left's code for anything moving in the direction of laissez-faire. In their view, rolling back regulation, no matter how restrictive, worthless or misguided in the first place, is an affront to the proper order, an abandonment of some mythical "little man" to the depredations of plutocratic others. This commentary sums up precisely the complete editorial viewpoint of this pink foregin newspaper; they are grudgingly for capitalism - proper, neat, polite, tamed and domesticated capitalism. They are all for the type of capitalism that won't step on toes or raise hackles at dinner parties or keep them from holidaying with the best people. In essence they are for a not quite static, but...the best word is "undynamic," capitalism, as opposed to dynamic capitalism. In other words, they are capitalists that sneer at true capitalism. Elitists would be another way to describe it.