Interview With Vaclav Klaus: Our Freedom Is Endangered, by Claudio Grass

An interview with the former president of the Czech Republic, Václav Klaus, by Claudio Grass of Global Gold, on davidstockman’scontracorner.com:

Liberty …

… is a fundamental human right; it is the cornerstone of our existence. But liberty is under attack from all directions, whether through higher state control or individuals themselves. Liberty is in search for its protector.

We were given the opportunity to talk to a vanguard of liberty, former President of the Czech Republic, Prof. Ing. Václav Klaus. Mr. Klaus shares with us how he embraced the values of classic liberalism and free markets while growing up under communism and the challenges he faced. Of course, we were eager to hear his account on the peaceful split of Czechoslovakia which took place during his years as Prime Minister and also about the transition of the currency system, which was successfully initiated at the same time.

We were keen to find out his stance on the situation in Greece and if a potential exit of countries like Greece from the Euro zone would be really such a disaster. We are happy to share with you the thoughts and perspectives of a man who says about himself that he “never intended to be a politician or office-seeker”. His motivation was to establish the rules of a market economy after the fall of communism but he never wanted to plan its outcome. Mr. Klaus has valued and protected the ideas of liberty and freedom for many years to this day.

Claudio Grass, Global Gold: Mr. Klaus, it’s a great honor and pleasure to be here and have this opportunity to interview one of the key shapers of the Czech Republic as it is today. The first time I actually saw you speak in person was at the “Gottfried von Haberler-Conference” last year, where you rightfully criticized a Canadian politician or diplomat after his speech due to his strong pro-government position, which you disproved using classical liberal arguments.

Can you tell us how you came in contact with classic liberalism and when you became a proponent of the free market and the Austrian School of Economics, especially as you were living under communism. I expect that literature was not widely available. Could you please elaborate on that?

Václav Klaus: The reason why I started following the concept of the free market was, I would say, communism. The system was irrational and based on something else, on the opposite of free markets, freedom and pluralistic democracy. So, it was relatively easy to see that attempts to mastermind the economy from above were basically wrong. I was helped by very carefully studying economic science.

The Austrian School of Economics, the Chicago School of Economics and public choice school gave me more arguments than other schools of economic thought. I had the chance in the 1960s to work in the Czechoslovakian Academy of Science, in the Institution of Economics, where I was supposed to study and criticize non-Marxist economic theories because that was the objective at the time. So I used the time to study non-Marxist economics but didn’t criticize it. On the contrary, I accepted it fully.

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