Market mullahs. "The goal is to change the human soul."

[Hoping4Change]

‘Economic common sense’ may be the most harmful fundamentalism of all. Tom Walkom (Toronto Star)takes aim at the propaganda offensive of the true believers of finance. ‘Economics is just the method. The goal is to change the human soul.’Margaret Thatcher.


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"We are in the era of the economic believers. The believers have nothing to do with Islam or Christianity. Their belief is in the power of money. They call this belief economics, or sometimes ‘common sense. They call themselves economists, or sometimes ‘practical people’.


What distinguishes a believer from an old-style economist is that the believer needs no proof. He just believes. This is not to suggest that post-war economists really did prove anything. Their science was always just a bit bogus, their uncertainties disguised by jargon and mathematics. But at least they thought they should prove things. They prided themselves on possessing rigorous objectivity - even when they didn’t.


The believers, on the other hand, know. They just know. They don’t need to prove anything. They are propagandists; their role is to convince. Like other fundamentalists, economic believers look back to the sacred texts. Westerners like to mock Iranian mullahs for relying on the Qu’ran. Economic believers are the real mullahs; they think Adam Smith has all the answers. But like other fundamentalists, believers prefer a simple version of this sacred text, one which justifies the present.


But what would Smith say today of the junk-bond dealers, high-priced corporate lawyers, government consultants and media economists so fond of quoting his work? Probably he would lump them in with courtiers and soldiers as socially non-productive. Probably he would be right. For the truth is that our economy is dominated not by those who create wealth in Smith’s sense, the hearty capitalist-owners of pin factories. It is dominated instead by those who manipulate wealth in its most abstract sense - by the Ivan Boeskys and Conrad Blacks of this world.


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Cutting wages, not inflation, is their real aim. But the believers don’t say that. They talk instead about economic reality. They urge us to face facts. They are on television every night, these secular Jim Bakkers. And they are just as sincere.



http://www.newint.org/issue210/market.htm