We're all sick of hearing how the big banks and Wall Street firms stole billions from the rest of us; and many of us acknowledge that, with virtually no one even threatened with jail for doing things you and I would be summarily put away for doing, nothing much will change. But the corruption of American business is not limited to the financial sector; and as I come across examples of this, I'll post them here.
December 21, 2012 - The NYT this week presented two examples this week of the pervasive and malign influence of money, and corporate behavior involving the ceaseless quest for more of it, on societies. First, last Sunday, there was a front-page article about a distinguished physician, nationally recognized, found himself involved in a large insider-trading scandal involving a well-known hedge fund and a pharmaceutical company-sponsored drug trial. and on Wednesday there was a lengthy article concerning the corrupt practices of Wal-Mart in Mexico.
February 19, 2012 - Last week Citigroup agreed to a $160 million fine for its poor (not to say criminal, although many do say it) handling of mortgage foreclosures. It occurs to me that this fine is pretty much a parking ticket for Citi, a slap on the wrist measured as an hour or two's earnings. And then it occurs to me, further, that it is really like a tax. In fact, and Citi isn't the only Wall Street firm in this category, the frequency of consent decrees, SEC cease-and-desist orders, agreements to pay a fine without admitting any guilt, etc, are in fact just like a tax system. It's one in which we say, "you keep operating your business, which is the business of cheating your customers, and we'll let you do it as long as you pay 'taxes' --not the ones in the tax code, but the legalized bribes we require of you." In other words, we want our cut.
This is fundamentally no different than the impromptu, unofficial checkpoints that appear haphazardly in third world countries (or places where the US Military has set up shop) to extract money from those who, legally or otherwise, are plying their trades in a chaotic environment. The SEC guys wear suits, but they are really just ragtag commandos riding around in jalopies, trying to get what they can from whoever they can. And for those who pay, like Citi, the SEC is just a nuisance, a cost of doing business.
February 3, 2012 - Out of nowhere this week, a huge flap concerning the decision of the "Susan G. Komen For The Cure" breast cancer foundation to cut off funding to Planned Parenthood. Today came the news that Komen has capitulated, after days of increasing outrage and way more attention on the front pages than, I am sure, those folks ever wanted. Like all bad-faith efforts, it seems, this one was marked by shifting explanations for the action, and by bad grade in the tenor of comments describing the reversal of the decision. The fact is, this corporation (and I mean that in the pejorative sense: this outfit has repeatedly sued small groups who, trying to do fundraising for their particular disease, have had the temerity to use "for the cure" in their advertisements) is run by a person who was conservative enough to run for governor as a Republican in a southern state, and is an announced foe of abortion, which is the brush the Right has used to tar Planned Parenthood.
This is the second instance, in as many weeks, of the power of "social media" to affect changes in apparently done deals. The first was the overthrow of the Stop Online Piracy Act after an outpouring of objections that included some popular websites (e.g., Wikipedia) going dark for a day in protest.
Up the Revolution!
January 16, 2012 - Barry Lynn, in the February issue of Harper's, has a stunning article on the capture of monopsony power by big corporations, who dominate industries, either alone (as with Amazon) or in collusion with their competitors (see: Silicon Valley) to deprive the worker, the supplier, and ultimately the consumer of the power to make choices, and thereby threaten to destroy the very concept of a market and so the freedom of personal agency that we have so long enjoyed that we hardly recognize it any more. They do this not by being the only seller in a formerly competitive market, but by being the only buyer. So, while consumers thrill to the prospect of the $9.99 bestseller on Amazon, most publishers have lost their independence or gone out of business entirely, which ultimately hurts the consumer even more than artificially low prices could ever help him.
January 13, 2012 - Joe Nocera, an NYT financial writer turned op-ed page regular, has mounted what seems to me to be a very effective one-man campaign to reveal the depths of the corruption in the NCAA. Okay, the National Collegiate Athletic Association isn't what we normally think of as a corporation; but it seems to have the sine qua non of modern American corporate culture: an inner circle bent on self-aggrandizement and the preservation of its institutional perquisites --which in this case apparently means absolute control over the lives of the "scholar-athletes" who are its supposed reason for existing in the first place, and kowtowing to even the most egregious demands of their member institutions. In this piece he follows up on an earlier story; together, they make one wonder if the colleges that underwrite the NCAA have any integrity at all when it comes to a choice between protecting their students or their sports revenues. And clearly, the NCAA doesn't care for the students at all.
August 8, 2011 - News Corp.'s malfeasance isn't new, and it's not limited to the U.K. David Carr, in today's Business Day section of the NYT, outlines an intriguing situation right here in the USA, one that fairly cries out for more investigation.
June 25, 2011 - Tyson Foods: bribery sanctioned at the top. Nobody was inconvenienced, so nobody cares; certainly not at the company, which considers both the bribes and the resulting fines just a cost of doing business, to be passed along to you and me.
