SIR – Governments are losing control of their economies to the forces of globalisation driven by markets.
Voters have no power to influence the course of events because the main political parties are all signed up to free market capitalism.
They have been sold on the fiction that free market capitalism occupies the centre ground of politics when, in fact, it lies far to the right.
It is a monstrous creation of Hayek and Friedman, a gift to the culture of greed and fear that drives markets.
Right-wing economists have the brass neck to demand fiscal reforms that amount to total privatisation and near-punitive austerity, seeking to punish the very taxpayers who bailed out the institutions of free market capitalism when their greed caused the first crisis of 2008.
There are three crises now threatening us: Sovereign debt; The prospect of more bank bailouts; Another recession.
Votes will not cure the problem because voters are kept in the dark and are not offered any alternative except by smaller socialist parties which they so far decline to support in any great numbers.
Democracy worked under the mixed economy.
Under free market capitalism, governments have to take unpopular decisions dictated by markets and ignore their electorates who are left with strikes and demonstrations as their only means of being heard.
PETER NIELSEN
Worcester
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