If You Thought The Smash And Grab Was Waning…Think Again!
Arthur Ruger over at Willapa View has a great post up about vulture capitalists and their economic terrorism of third world countries. That the wealthy and unscrupulous are preying on poor nations isn't a surprise, but what should be (but sadly isn't) is that our President refuses to do anything about it. Buth then again, why would he? These are, after all, his friends we're talking about and we all know that SOBs (Sycophants of Bush) will be protected by this administration, no matter the cost to the rest of the world. Go read Arthur's post and be prepared to get hoppin' mad.
posted by The (liberal)Girl Next Door @ 9:39 AM
2 Comments:
Well, this underlines what I consider the farce of free market capitalism.
How is it that public debt becomes private debt? If Romania can sell the debt owed it by Zambia, why can't Zambia declare bankruptcy? Why is it that Romania can't collect, but a private company can?
My attitude is that if the Ayn Randian laissez-faire capitalists want a totally free market, I say let them have it. Abolish corporations and let shareholders become individual partners jointly & severally liable for the decisions, debts, and crimes of their partnership.
Zambia ought to cut a cheque for $40,000,000 and impose an export duty of 90% reducing it to the $4,000,000 the vulture fund paid out.
It's sick. Corporation, which I prefer to call conspiracies against creditors, can always wiggle out of onerous debt, but the State are supposed to just keep on giving.
David - I hope you're joking to some degree. Public debt has been tradable since it was invented.
It was invented in Europe quite some time ago (centuries).
The fact that it is tradable is what makes public debt so useful and flexible.
Zambia is free to declare bankruptcy - if they do they will have a much more difficult time accessing the public debt market next time the Gov't wants to issue debt - not impossible but difficult.
Your suggestion about abolishing corporations is ridiculous.
Why would you want the managers of what used to be a corporation to be individually liable for every act of a your new non-corporate entity.
Surely you are joking about this - or just venting?
A corporation (in the benign sense) allows entities dealing with each other to treat each other as "persons" (i.e. "copreal or corporate") and therefore contract and conduct business. It allows for simplification. Otherwise for businesses to interact - contracts would need to be drawn among all the employees or at least managers for something as simple as selling copier paper to each other.
The fact that some corporations (Tyco, WorldCom, etc) commit crime does not mean that abolishing corporations would end crime.
Individuals committed those crimes and individuals would always commit crimes in any framework.
The "poor" countries that are being strangled by debt are actually being looted by their leaders - frequently in conjunction with "your" hated corporations.
Crimes may be being committed but they are not committed because there is a business framework for public debt nor because a framework for business interaction exists.
Everyone likes to vent - but if you are seriously condemning the business frameworks rather than people - you really need to re-examine your biases.
personaz1@hotmail.com
Post a Comment
<< Home