Even more than rent-seeking and government expansion here at home, the greatest danger of a left-leaning Obama administration may be the danger of capitulation to a new world government.

In the past, “One World Government” has been seen as a rallying cry of a fringe group, not something that many in the mainstream would either fear or desire. But, suddenly today it is on the lips of world leaders. The recent financial crisis is being blamed on a lack of world government.

The Financial Times reports:

Jacques Attali, an adviser to President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, argues that: “Global governance is just a euphemism for global government.” As far as he is concerned, some form of global government cannot come too soon. Mr Attali believes that the “core of the international financial crisis is that we have global financial markets and no global rule of law”.

But, the financial crisis was not caused by a lack of international regulation. Financial crises in the past have tended to occur more due to intervention than due to lack of regulation, and each of the banks that failed in this crisis was regulated by at least one country. Monetary policy was a major cause of the 1929 stock market crash and is implicated in just about every other crash.

In addition to dangerous monetary policy, one of the underlying causes of the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s was government industrial policy, “As part of their industrial policy, governments have directed funds toward favored industries at low rates of interest… This leads to excess lending to the companies that are well-connected and who may have bought influence with government officials.”

This is the same kind of corruption and rent-seeking we’ve been seeing back here at home, with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and in other areas of government. Extensive government reach into markets is what causes crashes and recessions – not a lack of even more expansive government reach.

These leaders want not only to abandon capitalism as we know it, but they want to force these ideas upon all countries by regulating companies at the international level. This kind of anti-market world governance would not make peace more likely, nor would it make free trade more possible or financial crises less frequent.