And interestingly, he pointed, not only to Smith's "The Wealth of Nations", but also his earlier book "The Theory of Moral Sentiments". He argued that greed may be good, but it needs to be balanced with a sense of decency, equity and fairness if there is going to be a marriage of private and public interests. Arguably, it was exactly because governments stood back more than ever from the world of finance and commerce that much of the ills of the credit crisis were able to take full root.
Barack Obama was the person who Schama hoped might ask the questions of whether a new system espousing great equity and fairness was required and whether a different dream could be sold rather than the previous simplistic one of merely maximising the bonuses of a few in the hopes that the trickle-down effect would benefit the many. But Obama seemed to have bottled -- despite all the promise of his campaign and even his inauguration, he has ignored the opportunity to be the moral guide. Instead, he resorted to the traditional route of negotiation and compromise in an attempt to pass his all sacred healthcare bill.
In the late 18th century the then leading economic and military power found itself with a massive debt that it could not service, teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and unable to live up to its political, social and military ambitions. That led to the French Revolution, the guillotine for its monarchy and then the Napoleonic wars which ravaged much of the rest of Europe. Getting an economy wrong can have repercussions.
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