Polls & Research

Europe, U.S. Blame Capitalism Abuses for Crisis

(Angus Reid Global Monitor) - Many adults in Western Europe and the United States believe the current financial market crisis has been caused by abuses of capitalism, according to a poll by Harris Interactive published in the Financial Times. At least 62 per cent of respondents in France, the U.S., Italy and Spain agree with this statement, along with 52 per cent of Britons and 46 per cent of Germans.

Since last year, defaults on so-called subprime mortgages—credit given to high-risk borrowers—have caused volatility in domestic and financial markets and raised concerns that the U.S. economy could fall into a recession.

Earlier this year, the U.S. government took control of mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Other financial institutions—including Bear Stearns, Merril Lynch, Lehman Brothers, American International Group (AIG), IndyMac Bancorp and Washington Mutual—have been sold, placed under bankruptcy protection, or received emergency loans from the Federal Reserve. European banks have also been affected, several stock indexes have seen a decline, and the market value of equities and commodities has been reduced.

On Oct. 23, former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan testified before the House of Representatives Committee of Government Oversight and Reform, declaring, "What went wrong with global economic policies that had worked so effectively for nearly four decades? The breakdown has been most apparent in the securitization of home mortgages. The evidence strongly suggests that without the excess demand from securitizers, subprime mortgage originations—undeniably the original source of crisis—would have been far smaller and defaults accordingly far fewer. But subprime mortgages pooled and sold as securities became subject to explosive demand from investors around the world. (...) It was the failure to properly price such risky assets that precipitated the crisis."

Polling Data

Would you say that the current financial market crisis has been caused more by "abuses of capitalism" or by the "failure of capitalism itself"? By capitalism, we mean the economic system in which the means of production are owned by private persons, and operated for profit and where investments, distribution, incomes, production and pricing of goods and services are predominantly determined through the operation of a free market, rather than by central economic planning.

	BRI	FRA	ITA	ESP	GER	USA
Abuses of capitalism	52%	68%	64%	62%	46%	66%
Failures of capitalism itself	13%	17%	11%	15%	30%	7%
Neither	7%	5%	8%	9%	13%	10%
Not sure	28%	10%	16%	14%	10%	16%

Source: Harris Interactive / Financial Times
Methodology: Online interviews with 6,276 adults in the United States, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Britain, conducted from Oct. 1 to Oct. 13, 2008. No margin of error was provided.