Capitalists Against the Super Rich
Analysis
BBC
4.6 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 23 January 2012
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Are the champions of the capitalist system now turning against the super-rich? And if they are, what will they now do about it? In this week's Analysis, we meet leading figures of the centre right who suddenly seem to have something in common with the political left: a moral aversion to the an era of high finance that saw huge payouts to a few, and bailouts funded by the rest. Prime Minster David Cameron opened 2011 with a speech criticising a system where "a few at the top get rewards that seem to have nothing to do with the risks they take or the effort they put in." He promises change, but how can that be achieved without undermining the logic of capitalism? Edward Stourton meets influential defenders of market forces who say they can keep the best of free trade but exclude the undeserving rich.
Interviewees:
Jesse Norman MP Matthew Hancock MP Nadhim Zahawi MP Charles Moore, former editor of The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Telegraph and The Spectator Donald Winch, Emeritus Professor of Intellectual History at Sussex University Raghuram Rajan, Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business
Producer: Mukul Devichand.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.7 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.5 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices. |
| 0:18.0 | What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
| 0:24.6 | poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples. |
| 0:29.7 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. |
| 0:36.0 | Thank you for downloading Analysis, the BBC radio program where we investigate the ideas that change the world. |
| 0:44.4 | This week, ever since the days of Margaret Thatcher, Britain's Conservative Party has championed |
| 0:49.4 | the free market. |
| 0:51.3 | But has the economic crash changed their minds? |
| 0:54.8 | Edward Sterton probes the new Tory thinking on capitalism. |
| 1:00.7 | Lovely little article in the telegraph, the woman who changed the face of history. |
| 1:06.0 | Meryl Streep in her remarkable performance as an elderly Margaret Thatcher looking back at her achievements. |
| 1:14.4 | The Iron Lady is a kind of apotheosis. It takes Lady Thatcher beyond the realm of |
| 1:19.9 | politics and makes her an almost Shakespearean character, a symbol of enduring human themes like |
| 1:25.8 | the struggle against adversity. |
| 1:28.6 | But even as the film has been doing such brisk business at the box office, some of the ideas most closely |
| 1:34.4 | associated with the Thatcher era have been coming under far from within her own |
| 1:39.4 | party. There was a kind of gospel of neoliberalism which essentially said that the only thing that mattered was where the markets were free. |
| 1:49.0 | We know that many of those great officially certified and sanctified views are actually false. |
| 1:56.3 | This is obviously a challenge to what some people have thought conservatism is over the last |
| 2:01.6 | couple of decades the challenge against Lesophir economics. |
... |
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