Laurent Joffrin on liberalism's destructive power

After exacerbating social inequality the world over, the dogmas of liberalism are now wreaking havoc on the Western economic model, the publicist Laurent Joffrin writes in the left-liberal weekly Le Nouvel Observateur: "People's savings are under threat once again as a result of the banks' failure to distinguish between purely speculative activities and their function as lenders. An irrepressible feeling of panic is spreading. A more equitable income tax policy favouring the middle classes - rather than a tiny elite of billionaires - is nowhere in sight, causing growth to tail off yet again as a result of the predictable drop in demand. The Anglo-Saxon world has been particularly slow to reform the fiscal system spreading doubts about the countries' ability to repay the huge debts taken out to save the financial system and revive the economy. ... Lenders fear their loans will not be repaid, and shareholders anticipate a new recession. Share prices are plunging pell-mell, ushering in the economic downturn that everyone feared. The dogmas of liberalism have already created massive injustice. Now they are ruining the Western economies."

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