I am surprised that so many big-corp CEOs are lefties instead of TEA Party types. They’re going to go the way of Reardon Steel if this carp isn’t stopped.
It’s funny how the left has been saying the Tea Party’s dead. Now we’re shutting down the whole country. And we’re doing it because we don’t want to lose control of those we feel are beneath us. Projection anyone? That is how liberals operate. We don’t want to control anyone, nor do we wish to be controlled, that’s the whole point! Ted Cruz scared the living crap out of them; they really did believe we were a bunch of ignorant Neanderthals.
Truly BIG business (GM, BOA, Citi) are like families in the old New York “Commission”. They divy up territory and market and conspire to knock off any upstarts who try to set up on their turf.
It is far easier for them to co-opt and harness the vast and unimaginably powerful bureaucratic machine to guarantee their profits than it is to engage in the difficult, messy and risky business of actual competition. Crony capitalism exists because crony capitalism works.
Insurance companies loved Obamacare because the gubmint would FORCE you to buy their product. This is just one example. They are willfully blind to the fact that that Obama set it up to fail, so he could build his socialized medicine system in the wreckage. Since the time horizon of American companies rarely extends beyond the next shareholder meeting, they don’t care. The CEOs will rotate from HP to PepsiCo to UPS in the great game if executive Musical Chairs, picking up options and golden parachutes along the way. As Keynes said, in the long fun, we’re all dead.
The casualties are the small and mid size companies who find themselves getting swatted like flies. Dare to dream that your enterprise could become an Apple or Microsoft? Guaranteed they won’t out compete you, they’ll just let the weight of regulation and gubmint harassment drag you down while they are big enough to stand on the bottom and still keep their noses above the water, if only barely. They got there first and now they have all of the money they need to buy access and influence and so effectively pull the ladder up behind themselves.
But they are deluding themselves. They think that the crocodile will eat them last. Was it Jefferson who compared government to fire, saying that both are fickle servants and fearful masters?
When and if the Fortune 500 CEOs find themselves kneeling and looking down into the proverbial trench, it’s going to be hard to resist the temptation to say, “I told you so!’