Last night CNBC had a program on hosted by Maria Bartiromo titled The Future Of Capitalism. The show had a panel of “experts” for a meeting of the minds. I have to say that some of the guest had more to offer than others.
The panel consisted of Larry Fink, the Chairman of Blackrock, Shelly Lazarus, the Chairman of Ogilvy & Mather, Vikram Pandit, the CEO of Citigroup, Marc Morial, the CEO of The National Urban League, Mohamed El-Erian, the Chairman of PIMCO, Cliff Asness, Chairman of AQR Capitol Management and Jack Welch, the former CEO of GE. I expected the show to be enlightening, but as the show went on that was not the case.
It was evident that many on the many on the panel didn’t want to rock the boat with the government (namely the Obama Administration) by saying anything negative against it’s policies. Jack Welch was the most interesting and honest of them all.
Throughout the show they touch on many key topics that are in the news today in regards to the economy. One of them being the fact that we are in a crisis of governance not credit. I do agree with that statement, but no one on the panel would even go further into the subject.
The one thing that did not sit well with me was the comment that was made by Marc Morial which was that capitalism needs to be reformed. As Larry Fink said, capitalism is not broken. Capitalism is what built this country to what it is today. Our constitution is based on that principal. Morial also stated that capitalism needed to be shared equally by the people. I disagree with that statement since capitalism is based on a person’s effort to work hard and strive for more. It’s not something that is just given out.
We are in an age of leverage, an age of entitlement as well as an age of self regulation. Unless we as a country live a moral and honest way of life, we will not remain the super power that this great notion is known for. We can not live outside our own means, we are not entitled to anything that we didn’t work for and we should only regulate ourselves if we can remain honest and have morals.
What we need more of is less government involvement and less taxes. We do not need government and private business to come together, what we need is government to stay out of the private sector.
CNBCTV Says:
If you missed “Meeting of the Minds” and would still like to see it, here are the airdates for the rest of May:
Friday, May 22nd 8p ET
Monday, May 25th 7a | 7p ET
Friday, May 29th 8p ET
Posted on May 19th, 2009 at 11:04 am
Stephanie Says:
Great post Billy!
I agree.
Stephanie´s last blog post..Unconscious Mutterings
Posted on June 7th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
Eve Says:
So what are we gaining out of this you ask? What is an American Voter gaining out of it? Unemployement? No Loans, High Charging Credit cards and highly respected institutions going thumbs down? Have we put our heart and soul into this country’s institutions for this?
Posted on June 17th, 2009 at 1:17 pm