Rescuing Capitalism from Corporatism

Between the start of the millennium in 2000 and the end of 2002, investors, retirees, big and small business people, and working folks as well as the very rich, lost some $7 trillion in the value of their holdings in American corporations.

The bulk of the losses wasn’t caused by “market” conditions, nor by the 9/11/2001 terrorism attack, nor by a depressed world economy.  Theft, pure and simple, caused the loss. Fraud, deceptive accounting, and seductive and deceitful lending schemes backed by the nation’s most respected financial institutions, bank. Stockholders watched their portfolios shrink by 30% and more. Employees saw their 401k retirement funds evaporate even as hundreds of thousands found themselves out on the street without jobs.

At the same time, while boards of directors nodded in benediction like bobble-head dolls, CEOs complicit in the frauds, the instigators of the deceptions, stuffed their personal bank accounts with hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation for their “brilliant” managerial performances.

Money losses, however, are only the most visible and countable parts of the corporate crime iceberg. Below the surface of TV sound bites and business page news briefs are stories far more disturbing and malodorous.

·         Secret meetings of chemical industry executives who have been told by their medical and safety staff that chemicals used in their plants are stripping the flesh from workers’ bones. Company doctors are sworn to secrecy. No warnings are given. Protective measures are not taken.

·         Auto insurance customers face bankruptcy because a “good neighbor” insurance company uses fraudulent “peer reviews” to deny payment of their medical bills.

·         Cities, counties, and states looking for economic and job growth are whipsawed by corporations bargaining for tax breaks, free utilities, and subsidies. Then, after collecting on the deals, the corporations often move their plants elsewhere.

These are but a few of the sad but true stories rising out of one flawed decision by the Supreme Court of the mid-1800s and the fraudulent recording of another (Santa Clara County vs. The Union Pacific Railroad). Influenced by corporate wealth and power, these two events triggered the descent of the United States from Democracy to Corpocracy.

A wonderful German mechanic I once turned to in desperation (after making a ham-fisted amateur mechanic’s mess of an expensive Porche engine) smiled reassuringly: “Anything man makes, man can repair.”

The application is obvious.  God did not create the corporation, man did.  We made it, we broke it and once we put aside the mythology and misconceptions surrounding this creation, we can fix it.

This is the story of how we started out as the land of capitalist free enterprise, where everyone might own a piece of America, and reached a point where corporations own us and America.

What follows is the author’s attempt to remove the blinders of corporate mythology that keep us enslaved to these creatures of our own making. To enlist the help of entrepreneurs, investors and students of business in rescuing capitalism from those who are abusing it. To loose the powerful engine of free enterprise from the grasp of corporate monsters now holding it captive.