Is capitalism in crisis? Of course. But to blame the capitalist system for the current worldwide economic crisis is like blaming cars for traffic accidents. It is true that without cars, there would be no traffic accidents, and that with without capitalism there would be no financial crises. But with financial crises, like with traffic accidents, the main cause is the people who are operating the system, controlling the environment, the physical infrastructure and the institutions. Capitalism and cars are "guilty" only because they enhance human freedom. Capitalism enhances economic freedom of creation and cars enhance freedom of movement. Human creativity will not prosper without freedom, in the field of economics, just as in science or art. But freedom does not only facilitate creation, it also allows for destruction: not only the doing of good but also evil. People require some form of ethical code in order to prevent creative freedom from turning into destructive lawlessness. The real estate and stock exchange crises, many of which have been presented as the failures of capitalism, are not actually the outcome of the capitalist structure, but rather the product of two massive U.S. government interventions. On the one hand, the flooding of U.S. markets with cheap credit by the Federal Reserve, without which the sale of trillion-dollar mortgages would not have been possible. On the other hand, the mortgage market was flooded by Bill Clinton's people, led by two government-controlled mortgage companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, in order to fulfill Clinton's social vision. They distributed almost two trillion dollars worth of mortgages that had almost no likelihood of being redeemed. These mortgage derivatives were the basis for speculations that caused the fall of the banks and of Wall Street. When the market is flooded with toxic mortgages that are also highly profitable, there is a great seduction for investment banks to join the speculation "celebration." But it is not only greed, a feature we always have, that pushed banks to participate in this government game, but also the need to compete and earn a lot. Still, this does not diminish their responsibility for the situation. But we must remember that without massive government involvement, the toxic mortgage market would not have developed to such an extent. Thus the fundamental reason for this crisis is government involvement. Just like in Israel, this type of involvement corrupts both the market and politics. These facts do not confuse anti-capitalists, especially those intellectuals who are jealous of the uneducated who make lots of money. There is an extreme form of anti-capitalist resentment in Israel that created a Marxist ethos relating any profitable activity with exploitation. According to Marx and his absurd Theory of Values, profit is the result of exploitation. Capitalism, the father of profits (and losses!) is considered to be an original sin that must be uprooted. Anti-capitalists don't care that it brought wealth and abundance into the world, especially to those with low incomes, as is happening currently in India and China. They despise the system's remarkable achievements all along the Human Development Index, including increased life span and health, promoting the status of women and children, public education and progressive development. Why do they do this? Because they have one obsession: to ensure "equality," currently dubbed "social justice," so there will not be jealousy. Anti-capitalists deny the fact that any regime that has attempted to ensure monetary equality among its citizens - and even they would have to agree that not every human has equivalent attributes - only ended up creating an equal amount of poverty, misery and oppression except, of course, for those close to the regime. In contrast, regimes that advocated freedom, especially economic freedom, did not bring about complete equality, which would be impossible without some sort of coercion because people possess different money-earning potentials, but definitely greatly reduced the gaps. The most important thing is that capitalism allowed the lower income strata a comfortable life that in the past even the rich could only dream of. The commotion of the "Occupy Wall Street" and "National Left" movements in other countries, coming here soon, prove how easy it is to incite against capitalism. The subversive rely on widespread economic ignorance among students, influence by popular writers who demonize capitalism and Marxists professors who hold to stale theories and engage in intensive indoctrination of their students. The disintegration of Greek society teaches what riots and "social protests," also planned in Israel, can cause. Compared to the social disaster they can bring about, the serious problems of capitalism look like child's play.
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