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Oh. Boy. Another. Mishandled. Appointee.

I guess Daschle will have to go back to consulting and lobbying.

In that respect, there is an interesting article by Christian Caryl in the NYR of Books at www.nybooks.com… about Edward Lucas’s book “The New Cold War: Putin’s Russia and the Threat to the West”, which I haven’t read. The review quotes several excerpts from the book on capitalism which I reproduce below.

1. “The regulators of the world’s financial centers must rethink how they deal with Russian (and for that matter Chinese) companies wanting to use them. The free market cannot be decoupled from the free society. The industrialized world has shown its capacity for collective action in dealing with money laundering. It could do the same for corporate governance and property rights. That would mean, for example, that any company wanting to list its shares or sell its bonds in London, New York, or Frankfurt would have to make it clear that it was engaged in a real business, not the collection of artificial rents; that its property was not stolen; and that its ownership was clear and truly private. Gazprom and [the Russian oil company] Rosneft, along with most big Russian companies, would be immediately disqualified.”

2. “Either [the G-8] should become a big-economies club (in which case China, India and Brazil should join), or it is a body for rich countries that respect the rule of law and political freedom. In that case Russia does not even belong in the waiting room.”

And, most relevant

3. “If you believe that capitalism is a system in which money matters more than freedom, you are doomed when people who don’t believe in freedom attack using money.”

One wonders if there will ever be a viable third political party in America.

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