France and Germany back moral capitalism

French President Nicolas Sarkozy hosted an economic symposium on “New World, New Capitalism” last week. The only other world leaders who attended were Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, and Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the Liberian president, although Tony Blair, Britain’s former prime minister, was there too. Two Nobel-prize winning economists, Amartya Sen and Joseph Stiglitz, were there too. Evidently the event was downgraded from a summit because few world leaders would attend.

Sarkozy evidently used the event to argue that modern-day capitalism based on speculation had been “perverted” and was “an immoral system”. In his view a new capitalism, not solely based on finance, should be created.

I suspect their “moral” capitalism would be even worse than the existing version.