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We Owe the Brash Task Force A Debt of Gratitude
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Gordon Is Right This Time
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Spend Now, Prosper Later
Filthy Rich
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Treasury Must Look Past Interest Rates To Boost Economy
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Not In My Name
When The Facts Change
An Ideological Straitjacket
Lessons from the Crisis
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Fiscal Stimulus? Not Quite
Politics Not Economics
Open Letter to Our New Prime Minister
Shifting Foundations
Putrefaction
Yes, There Is An Alternative
Post-meltdown
Meltdown
Rescuing the New Zealand Economy
Unesco Appointment for Bryan Gould
Don't Leave It To The Bankers
Was Gordon Brown's Reputation Justified?
Universities "More Than Just Agents of Economic Development"
New Appointments for Bryan Gould
New Labour - Not Labour
The End of New Labour?
So Much for Liquidity - Now Let's Have a Serious Approach to Inflation
What Should Gordon Brown Do Now?
A Fibre Optic Network - Twenty Years Earlier
Let's Hear It For The Macro Economy
Beaches - for Cars or People?
Bryan Gould to Chair FORST
A Brown Study
Why Democracy? Bryan Gould Writes for The Observer
Rogue Markets
Bryan Gould's Submission to Select Committee Inquiry Into Monetary Policy
Bryan Gould on Gordon Brown
Needless Casualties in the Economic War
C'llr Magazine
The Roger Awards
The Beginning of the End of the Road
My Vision for New Zealand
British Labour in 2007
Yes, There Is An Alternative
Why Are Interest Rates Not Working?
The Globalisation Bell Tolls for us All
Global Warming and Market Failure
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Tony Blair's Easy Options
How Has Labour Done?

WHEN GLOBAL COMPANIES CALL THE SHOTS, WHAT'S LEFT OF DEMOCRACY?

A single global economy and a properly functioning democracy cannot exist together, Dr Bryan Gould told a Wellington audience last night.

Speaking at the annual presentation of the Roger Awards*, Dr Gould - the author of The Democracy Sham and the former Vice-Chancellor of Waikato University - said that a global economy is by definition one in which there is no room for government intervention.

"If governments were able to intervene to create different conditions in different countries, there would no longer be a single global market," Dr Gould said. "Instead, the major transnational companies dictate to elected governments the policies they must pursue. If they do not get their way, international investors simply threaten to take their investment elsewhere."

"If the huge transnational companies are able to call the shots, as they do, there is no room for democracy. The whole point of democracy is that it guarantees the diffusion of power throughout society, to offset what would otherwise be the overwhelming economic power of the hundred or so major conglomerates that dominate the world economy."

"If elected governments can no longer do this, the democracy we think we enjoy is a sham. There is no point in electing governments to protect our interests if the reality is that they must do the bidding of the big players in the global economy."

"Those who proclaim that the market is always right and must never be gainsaid should acknowledge that that position is incompatible with democracy. You can proclaim the infallibility of the market or you can opt for a functioning democracy. You cannot have both."

Dr Gould said that a major political effort would be needed, in conjunction with other countries, if the power of the major transnationals was to be rolled back and democracy was to be re-established in countries like New Zealand and around the globe.

* The Roger Awards are made annually to recognise New Zealand's worst-performing transnational companies.

Bryan Gould
20 March 2007

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