Governments and Markets - Research Paper Example

Review of the Speech Eliot Laurence Spitzer is an American citizen and lawyer. He is also a renowned commentator and politician. In his speech at Harvard University on government and marketplace, Eliot Spitzer addresses a wide variety of issues on the relationship between government and the economic domain. Basing his arguments on experience especially as a former state attorney general and a later as the New York governor, he discussed issues such as government intervention, the limits of government interference and means of reforming the corporate governance (Zimmerman, 2005). Gov. Eliot Spitzer divides his speech into three distinct and comprehensive areas.

These are outlined as follows: the parameters of government intervention in the market place, response to the media cases and the reflection on proper governance. Eliot Spitzer observes that government involvement in the present-day American economy is limited. Gov. further divides his first subject of the speech into three areas of study. According to Eliot Spitzer, only the government can enforce rules relating to the integrity and transparency in the market place. . He precisely points out the government’s weakness in carrying out unrealistic projects that he terms as “too big to fill.

” According to him, too big to fill is too big not to fill. He further emphasizes that the US and its people needs new laws and not regulators who do not want to use the powers they have for the good of the economy. In accordance with his view, such regulators are only interested in creating crises of which they take advantage to get more power and promotions. On proper governance, he cites recent statistics on the ratio of the average CEO’s compensation to that of the average worker, which has unexpectedly grown from 40:1 to 550:1.

On the other hand, he claims that the CEOs do not really provide value ten times the average worker in their respective places of work. He also criticizes the shareholders who are not interested in taking the much tougher task of reforming such corporations. Concepts Agreed with Eliot Spitzer’s view on the role of the government in enforcing laws and regulations that relate to the integrity and transparency in the market is a brilliant idea. The market is only a single aspect in the coordination process of economic mechanisms (Stonehouse, 2004).

The mechanism, however, consists of the market, government, and other firms. Without proper enforcement of non-price factors and laws, the market cannot function efficiently. The market mechanism can only handle gradual and secondary transformations. However, it is not enough to accelerate the development of supply competence and endorse self-motivated comparative advantage only. Consequently, some amount of government intervention is requisite to harmonize market forces at every level of market growth (Marquardt, 2012).

However, the