Thursday, May. 14, 2009

Arianna Huffington

On capitalism
It was clear among many of the founders of capitalism that there had to be a moral foundation. What happened is that capitalism was reduced to Ayn Rand-ian selfishness. We need to recapture the principle that you do well, but in the process of doing well, you give back.

On the bailout
What is fascinating is the agreement among serious economists that we're doing the wrong thing by trying to protect the Wall Street oligarchy. What's amazing is that we're not having enough of a populist outrage about that.

On the market
My concern is that we're looking at the stock market as an indicator of self-correction, and I think that's a fallacy. There is still an illusion among many in this country that we can just get back to where we were, and I believe a) we cannot and b) we should not.

On poverty
The World Food Program estimates that if you spend just over $2 billion, you can feed every schoolchild going hungry around the world. We actually need to look at the opportunity cost of what we are not doing when we are saving Citigroup.

Watch video clips from the roundtable.