The Guardian: David Cameron's popular capitalism speech

Link to The Guardiian

"... For all those understandable qualms over City bonuses and bank bailouts, the neoliberal system of the past 30 years is defined as the only game in town. Or, as the Times columnist Danny Finkelstein put it on Newsnight, the choice comes down to the Soviet Union or Brent Cross shopping centre.

"... In his brilliant essay, 'The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century', EP Thompson described how the Hanoverian public could accept the market, but not an irresponsible capitalism undermining the common weal. ... Thomas Paine was also thinking about how the marketplace and commercial society could benefit all – if only it was properly regulated."

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Sir,

I have noticed a startling similarity between Stalin's palatial Moscow Underground stations, and the main corridor of Brent Cross shopping centre. Are they possibly related?

Yours, etc.

Brent Cross shopping centre, outside John Lewis

Moscow Underground, on a quiet Wednesday

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Link to Daily Telegraph

Daily Telegraph: "For Britain to flourish, so must capitalism"

"All three leaders of Britain’s main political parties have this week given speeches on the future of capitalism. Despite their differences, they all broadly agree that as an economic system, there is no viable alternative.

"... The recession has been deeper and more persistent than anything we have seen in the recent past. More than three years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, economic activity remains far below its pre-crisis peak. Capitalism has failed to heal itself in the normal way. What is more, this is a crisis which is seen, rightly or wrongly, to have been caused by the hubris and greed of finance. Bankers, it is widely believed, took the gains of the boom, leaving society at large to pick up the costs of the crash. The sense of social injustice this has created is understandably strong."