The Weekly Portion: A responsible government must intervene

While we were celebrating Rosh Hashana, the week's major event took place far from here, in Washington and on New York's stock exchange.

The Administration's intervention to bail out the American economy by injecting hundreds of billions of dollars into the banking and financial industries and companies in distress is an event equal in historic significance to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989. Small wonder that the US Congress refused to support the plan the first time around.

The significance of the bailout is the collapse of the ideology that sanctifies market forces and rejects governmental intervention in economic processes. Runaway profits were garnered by the mortgage banks and investment houses as they irresponsibly inflated the real estate bubble; this led to a broad-scale collapse which severely threatens the American economy. The administration, which by virtue of that same ideology allowed the market to do whatever it pleased and whatever was good for profits, at the last minute showed some responsibility, abandoned its classical capitalist ideology and took action. It is not even known whether the plan will succeed. Yet the fact that the plan did not get the needed House votes the first time around already serves as a belated confirmation that a responsible government must intervene in the economy, for the benefit of its people. If such intervention is constant and blatant, it destroys the economy. If done in a measured manner, only where and when necessary, it can prevent a disastrous crisis such as the one America is now facing.

My world-view says that a government is responsible for the welfare of its citizens. And that it is under an obligation to work toward this goal. Readers of the "Weekly Portion" are invited to come on Sunday [for details click here (in hebrew)] to the presentation of Israel Hazaka's Party Platform. It was drafted by some fifty experts who volunteered their time and professional skills. The Platform reflects our "engaged government" world-view, and details its practical implications for all aspects of life in Israel. The Platform, as well as its summary version, will appear on the party website http://israelhazaka.org.il as of Yom Kippur Eve. It points the way toward a correct socioeconomic policy, the opposite of the one which has generated the present world crisis.