Al Gore: We Must Practice ‘Sustainable’ Capitalism

Let me say up front that I am an admirer of Al Gore, despite our manifest political differences. Notwithstanding specious accusations that he claimed to have “invented the Internet” (he didn’t claim that, but he was certainly the political attending physician at its birth), Gore is one of the brightest people to have participated in our government in recent decades. Compare, for example, the man who “beat” him (yeah, right) to become president… yes, Gore is a great deal smarter, though not so capable of betrayal of people who trust him.

After a brief bitter period following the 2000 selection, Gore moved on to other things, some environmentalist in nature, some more a synthesis of fields across his areas of expertise. This is one of those other things: “sustainable” capitalism:

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Together with David Blood, senior partner of ‘green’ fund firm Generation Investment Management, the environmental activist has crafted a blueprint for “sustainable capitalism” he wants the financial industry to adopt to support lasting economic growth.

“While we believe that capitalism is fundamentally superior to any other system for organizing economic activity, it is also clear that some of the ways in which it is now practiced do not incorporate sufficient regard for its impact on people, society and the planet,” Gore said.

At a briefing ahead of Thursday’s launch, David Blood said capitalism has been blighted with short-termism and an obsession with instant investment results, which had ramped up market volatility, widened the gap between rich and poor and deflected attention from the deepening climate crisis.

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Read the rest. It’s an intriguing idea. And surely it cannot be worse than current practices, which are unmistakably leading us over the cliff in a hurry.

Mitt Romney: Bain Of The American Worker

Bain. Sic. Also sick. Here is a painfully direct half-hour film on the worst the Republican Party can offer us… and believe me, that’s evil indeed:

(H/T Mustang Bobby.)

Schlesinger On FDR, The Wealthy, And The New Deal

This is a rather long paragraph I’m quoting, but I think you’ll find it worth your time. It’s from Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.’s The Coming of the New Deal, first published in 1957 1958, pp. 496-497:

One American who was not much surprised was the President. He had known the rich too long and too well to take them very seriously. His upbringing as a Hudson River Squire had given him a sense of superiority over mere millionaires, and nothing he had seen in the years since Hyde Park and Groton led him to suppose that money conferred wisdom. He declined to pay the rich the compliment of fearing them. He thought rather that they inclined to be ignorant and hysterical. For a moment, perhaps, he had hoped that the humility induced by depression might endure. Certainly his attempt at business-government cooperation in 1933 was sincere enough. The “challenge to industry” implied in the National Industrial Recovery Act was still for him, in March 1934, “a great test” to see how business leaders could operate for the general welfare. But, in the meantime, he was losing faith in business motives. “Now that these people are coming out of their storm cellars,” he complained, “they forget that there ever was a storm.” He believed that a “rather definitely organized effort” had been made in the fall of 1933 to destroy the New Deal and it seemed to him that this drive was being renewed in the spring of 1934. Speaking at Green Bay, Wisconsin in August 1934, Roosevelt suggested that for a certain kind of businessman confidence could evidently be restored only by repealing all regulatory laws. “If we were to listen to him and his type, the old law of the tooth and the claw would reign in our Nation once more.” And business talk about “liberty” left him equally cold. “I am not for a return to that definition of liberty,” he said crisply in October, “under which for many years a free people were being gradually regimented into the service of the privileged few.”

Compare with Barack Obama and today’s Republicans… and weep for our nation.

Romney, The Unapologetic Plutocrat

I confess I’m already tired of the horse race, but it’s here, and GOPers have gotten out of the gate so quickly that all one can see are horses’ asses. Today’s particular horse’s ass is Mitt Romney, whose father gave him advice about running for office:

“I happened to see my dad run for governor when he was 54 years old,” Romney said. “He had good advice to me. He said never get involved in politics if you have to win election to pay a mortgage. …

Yep. Good advice, all right. No more Mr. Smiths going to Washington; they should just stay home and pay a mortgage… even if the mortgage may be snatched away from them illegally. Heed Mitt’s advice: if you have to ask how rich you have to be, you’re not rich enough to run for high office.

I’ve been reading more in Schlesinger’s The Coming of the New Deal (no link because it’s on dead trees, but new editions are still available), and ran across a rather unsavory fellow named Richard Whitney. He was a financier in the crazy days of the late 1920s and 1930s, and when the original legislation regulating securities was proposed, Whitney was one of those howling loudest in rage at the prospect of any sort of regulation. Whitney dressed the part of the perfect businessman of his day: his portly body clothed in a perfectly tailored suit and topped with a perfect hat, a perfect gold watch with chain dangling perfectly from his pocket when he appeared on business occasions. The stock market was “perfect,” Whitney said… his word; I’m not paraphrasing… and must not be tampered with. Despite his best efforts, regulatory legislation eventually became law, and it was (I presume) far more difficult to fleece the public than it had been. And Whitney? Well, here’s Wikipedia:

Having retired as president of the NYSE in 1935, Whitney remained on the board of governors, but in early March 1938, his past began to catch up with him when the comptroller for the NYSE reported to his superiors that he had established absolute proof that Richard Whitney was an embezzler and that his company was insolvent. Within days, events snowballed, and Whitney and his company would both declare bankruptcy. An astonished public learned of his misdeeds on March 10 when he was officially charged with embezzlement by New York County District Attorney Thomas E. Dewey. Following his indictment by a Grand Jury, Richard Whitney was arrested and eventually pleaded guilty. He was sentenced to a term of five to ten years in Sing Sing prison. On April 12, 1938, six thousand people turned up at Grand Central Station to watch as a scion of the Wall Street Establishment was escorted in handcuffs by armed guards onto a train that delivered him to prison.

Mitt Romney has done a lot of morally deplorable things in his wealth-lined life; it comes with the territory of corporate raiding. Were any of those things illegal, and will any of them eventually catch up with him? Will his presidential run lead, not to the White House, but to the Big House? Stay tuned!

 

Corporate Rule: The Real Thing

When we speak of corporate rule, in America or elsewhere, we usually speak notionally, not literally. In view of this article from The Independent, it appears that referring to “corporate rule” in Europe, in particular by Goldman Sachs, should be taken quite literally: their direct high-level involvement in several European governments is broad and deep. For the situation at a glance, look at the map of Europe in the linked article. (Americans of my generation are quite good at reading a “bleeding map”; in my youth, though, the red areas of the maps were intended to convey the spread of communism. The more things change…)

There is much food for thought here, to be addressed later; I just wanted to acknowledge the fact so everyone can begin exploring the reality.

(H/T L’Enfant de la Haute Mer.)

AFTERTHOUGHT: this is not entirely and only a European problem. America has its share of Goldman exes in government, which Enfant was quick to note in the comments. Please read the comment thread. I just reread the post above and realized that I may have unintentionally implied that the problem is European but not American. It is very much America’s problem too.

Bloomberg Op-Ed Author Quotes Karl Marx… Favorably

No, seriously. George Magnus says “Give Karl Marx a Chance to Save the World Economy.” Along with the ritual disclaimers one might expect, Magnus also points out that today’s post-Great-Recession world looks a lot like the one Marx described in Das Kapital.

Here are five major planks of a strategy whose time, sadly, has not yet come.

Magnus then offers five proposals, concluding with this assessment:

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We can’t know how these proposals might work out, or what their unintended consequences might be. But the policy status quo isn’t acceptable, either. It could turn the U.S. into a more unstable version of Japan, and fracture the euro zone with unknowable political consequences. By 2013, the crisis of Western capitalism could easily spill over to China, but that’s another subject.

I know MandT will be pleased with Magnus’s article! 🙂