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The Federalist Diaries
Are
We Going to Lose This One?, Part 6
Libertarian
ideologues and moneygrubbers stand aside. Make room for the people.
Statement
of August 19, 2008, by Don McCanne,
retired
physician and an advocate on behalf of Physicians for a National Health
Program, an organization of fourteen thousand American physicians advocating
for single-payer national health insurance.
What does the following,
frightening assertion have to do with American democracy?
We know that money has great influence in legislative houses,
locally, statewide, and nationally. If
there are people whose aim in life is the pursuit of wealth, they will use
their money to ensure their wealth, even if that means manipulating or
retarding democracy.
Vulture
Funds: A New Category in Capitalism
A
new capitalism – brutal and conquering – is moving in. It’s the
capitalism of a new category of vulture funds: private equity funds with the
appetite of an ogre that command colossal amounts of capital.
Ignacio Ramonet, 05 Aug
2008
http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/76/vulture_funds.html
A
new capitalism – brutal and conquering – is moving in. It’s the
capitalism of a new category of vulture funds: private equity funds with the
appetite of an ogre that command colossal amounts of capital.
The
names of these titans – The Carlyle Group, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts &
Co. (KKR), The Blackstone Group, Colony Capital, Apollo Management, Starwood
Capital Group, Texas Pacific Group, Wendel, Eurazeo, etc. – remain little
known to the general public. And, sheltered by that discretion, they’re in
the process of taking possession of the global economy. In four years, from
2002 to 2006, the sum raised by these investment funds, which collect the
money of banks, insurance companies, pension funds, and the assets of the
richest individuals, went from $137 billion to $524 billion. Their financial
firepower is phenomenal, exceeding $1.6 trillion. Nothing withstands them.
Last year, in the
United States, the main private equities firms invested $424 billion in repurchasing
companies, and more than $322 billion during just the first semester of
2007, thus taking control of 8,000 companies. Already one American employee
out of four – and close to one French employee out of 12 – works for
these mastodons.
The
phenomenon of these rapacious funds erupted about 15 years ago, but is now
on steroids. Thanks to cheap credit and ever more sophisticated financial
instruments, that phenomenon has lately taken on a worrying scope. The
principle is simple: a club of wealthy investors decides to buy up companies
that they then manage privately, far from the stock market and its
restrictive rules, and without having to account to fussy, fuddy-duddy
shareholders. The idea is to circumvent the very principles of the
capitalist ethic by betting on the laws of the jungle only. ...
December 11, 2008
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