The Economic Crisis - Public vs. Private Interests Once Again

The current economic crisis provides an important opportunity for government
ethics professionals. It takes our eyes out of the trees -- individual government
officials' conflicts of interest -- and lets us see the forest. <br>

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Here's an excerpt from Senior Fellow Benjamin Barber's <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/benjamin-r-barber/the-fiscal-meltdown-rev…; target="”_blank”">Huffington
Post blog entry</a> today (Barber is author of the classic book <span>Strong Democracy</span>):<br>
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<p>[T]he way out [of the economic crisis]
lies not just through technical fixes or pumping public money into
failing banks and insurance companies. It means reasserting our rights
as citizens to regulate the market. It means insisting we will not
support the new 'socialism of risk' unless we also share in the profits
(that's another way to reduce taxes!)</p>

<p>In short, it means consumers must become
citizens again, reclaiming their democratic right to fiscal
transparency, political oversight and market regulation. <span>It means the public sector must
come back not just in the default mode when the private sector fails,
but actively and constructively so that the public weal takes
precedence over private interests in good times as well.</span>
[emphasis added]</p>
<p>Such an arrangement has a name:
democracy. The crisis will have been worth it if we finally learn this
lesson.<br>
</p>
<p>Say "government ethics" and you usually get the response "that's an
oxymoron." But it's amazing how much in life comes down to private vs.
public interests. The government ethics framework can't handle many of
these issues, but in fact its central element of private vs. public
interests is central to most of them.<br>