Liz Warren's "Accountable Capitalism Act"

[Mac1958]

I do agree that setting arbitrary limits on figures in regulations just begs to be played with on the back end. So any time you see a specific number, you're seeing an opportunity for the regs to be played with.

On a macro scale, my interest with this proposal is more about the fundamental function of American corporations. As I mentioned, the (current) reason for the existence of a corporation is to maximize shareholder value. Warren and others are trying to change "shareholders" to "stakeholders", and that would be a pretty profound change.

I think it's a conversation worth having, and sometimes a couple of parts taken from a variety of ideas can yield some pretty good stuff.
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I understand why people like the proposal, or don't, but perspective and intent, are desires and not limits.

Where you mentioned "an opportunity for the regulations to be played with", that's not what I meant at all. The legislation sets the regulations and the limits. Someone acting within the limits of regulations is obeying the law and isn't playing with anything. They are simply using the limit someone else has determined to regulate the return on their investment. You cannot make someone do what they don't want to do, unless you forbid their doing what they want it altogether.

If you want to stop rich people from getting richer, you are going to have to stop them from gaining a return on the money they invest, simple as that. Her proposal just tries to reallocate the resources. If the government limits who can get rich off an endeavor, the limits aren't restricted to the Board of Directors. If they choose to try and screw the rich people, they are going to screw everyone. A rich person can find a country that wants corporate investment, quicker than an unemployed person can find a job.

That's not playing around with anything, just defining the difference between dreams and risks. Don't make the mistake of thinking it is a some kind of game, money talks and bullshit walks. Give money a reason to walk away, and watch what happens (it seems as though people would have figured that out by now).

Well, instead of saying "played with" I could have said "find loopholes and advantages in", or something else. Semantics.

Politics is (unfortunately) about optics, and I'm just looking at the optics of this. One of the primary drivers behind this current wave of interest in Euro-socialism is our expanding wealth disparity. Warren, for better or worse, is addressing it. And the way she is addressing it is by trying to fundamentally change the very character of corporations.
.

 

[gipper]

More of that "democratic socialism"

No thanks....and her act doesn't have a prayer

If we let these corporations to run around unfettered by regs or law, the people of our country will increasingly reject capitalism. 2008 has done irreparable harm to the image of capitalism and we need to hobble these CEOs so they dont do even worse.

Agreed. The problem is our huge omnipresent extraordinarily expensive central government PROTECTS the CEOs, rather than the citizenry. 2008 made this more evident than ever.

 

[Mac1958]

Everything the government touches gets better, so why not?
Said no one ever.

Correct, because most people don't exist in a shallow, simplistic, binary world.

Most know that this all exists on a continuum, and that the key is striking the proper balance.
.

If people don’t like what a company does they don’t buy from that company. Ask Facebook and Twitter.

If people don’t like what an unelected and unaccountable Government agency does, too bad.
Ask anyone who’s had to deal with the IRS, BLM, EPA, etc etc.

The counter-argument is that because a corporation exists within a society in which there are many shared and symbiotic affects of behaviors, it must be held to a certain level of corporate responsibility and regulation. So the question, again, is striking the proper balance between pure free market capitalism and corporate responsibility.
.

So people go to prison because an unaccountable Government employee feels an employee was not treated “fairly”

Sounds like communism.

Then you don't know what communism is.

Communism is an economic system where there is no private ownership of anything.

The government owns everything in a communist economy.

Now, tell me how regulating corporations is the government taking ownership of a private corporation.

Well, in current conservative lexicon, "communism" means "any more government, anywhere, in any way, than we currently have."

Something like that.
.

 

[Hiryuu]

Well, instead of saying "played with" I could have said "find loopholes and advantages in", or something else. Semantics.

Politics is (unfortunately) about optics, and I'm just looking at the optics of this. One of the primary drivers behind this current wave of interest in Euro-socialism is our expanding wealth disparity. Warren, for better or worse, is addressing it. And the way she is addressing it is by trying to fundamentally change the very character of corporations.
.

They aren't loopholes, the government sets the limit. Operating within the limit isn't a loophole. It's doing what the government has required to remain compliant.

What you are saying is simply optics and nothing more. What you are talking about is people that want to be rich because other people are rich. That's simply not how it works, and the rich have resources they can use, until the poor just steal it from them. If someone thinks that is the right thing to do, then they just need to stop pussyfooting around and steal the rich people's money. Making up reasons to justify it, doesn't make it the right thing to do.

 

[Natural Citizen]

If we let these corporations to run around unfettered by regs or law, the people of our country will increasingly reject capitalism. 2008 has done irreparable harm to the image of capitalism and we need to hobble these CEOs so they dont do even worse.

You are in dire need of reeducation. Respectfully.

Start by studying economic theory and monetary policy.

The monetary policy brought 2008. And it's gonna bring the same bust in the market again because the same policy of overinflation, manipulating interest rates, and malinvestment is still in effect. Keynesianism is what is giving Capitalism a bad name. And Keynesianism is Socialism. Go back to 1930 to learn about when the Keynesians came to power over our monetary policy..

As far as corporate personhood, you could learn a bit from studying history. Santa Clara County vs Pacific Railroad, for starters.

Seek the wisdom of the Constitution in terms of the right to lobby government. Start with the 1st Amendment.

And always, always, be fearful of those infamous words we all know so well in the form of "I'm here from the government and I'm here to help."

More government is not the solution. The solution is liberty against government-over-man. The solution is get back to free-markets.

 

[Mac1958]

Well, instead of saying "played with" I could have said "find loopholes and advantages in", or something else. Semantics.

Politics is (unfortunately) about optics, and I'm just looking at the optics of this. One of the primary drivers behind this current wave of interest in Euro-socialism is our expanding wealth disparity. Warren, for better or worse, is addressing it. And the way she is addressing it is by trying to fundamentally change the very character of corporations.
.

They aren't loopholes, the government sets the limit. Operating within the limit isn't a loophole. It's doing what the government has required to remain compliant.

What you are saying is simply optics and nothing more. What you are talking about is people that want to be rich because other people are rich. That's simply not how it works, and the rich have resources they can use, until the poor just steal it from them. If someone thinks that is the right thing to do, then they just need to stop pussyfooting around and steal the rich people's money. Making up reasons to justify it, doesn't make it the right thing to do.

Okay, then you have nothing to worry about.
.

 

[JimBowie1958]

I believe you missed the obvious. It is the political process (in Senator Warren's proposal) trying to mess with corporations, so what you really mean is that corporations shouldn't be able to defend themselves from our political process.

The political process is HOW we control the grotesquely wealthy corporations. They have no right of self defense.

 

[Hiryuu]

Okay, then you have nothing to worry about.
.

I wasn't worried in the first place. Regulation will never overcome adaptation and innovation. They are opposites in dynamics and regulation is always limited by its very nature.

 

[JimBowie1958]

If we let these corporations to run around unfettered by regs or law, the people of our country will increasingly reject capitalism. 2008 has done irreparable harm to the image of capitalism and we need to hobble these CEOs so they dont do even worse.

You are in dire need of reeducation. Respectfully.

Start by studying economic theory and monetary policy.

The monetary policy brought 2008. And it's gonna bring the same bust in the market again because the same policy of overinflation, manipulating interest rates, and malinvestment is still in effect. Keynesianism is what is giving Capitalism a bad name. And Keynesianism is Socialism.

As far as corporate personhood, you could learn a bit from studying history. Santa Clara County vs Pacific Railroad, for starters.

Seek the wisdom of the Constitution in terms of the right to lobby government. Start with the 1st Amendment.

And always, always, be fearful of those infamous words we all know so well in the form of "I'm here from the government and I'm here to help."

More government is not the solution. The solution is liberty against government-over-man. The solution is get back to free-markets.

The 2008 fiasco was a combination of multiple breakdowns in our regulated financial industry, not only one cause, but most of them can be summarized as breakdowns in the oversight of the industry by the government.

The equity raters like Moody's dropped the ball and were giving AAA ratings to MBS's that were full of subprime rot and they knew were soon to be worthless as defaults on those subprimes turned the MBS into $0 profit paper.

This triggered the completely unregulated CDS payoffs 90% of which were held by people who owned none of the MBS's, which magnified the wealth destroyed by an order of magnitude.

That banks were able to escape the consequences of their abysmally bad loans by simply repackaging them as MBS's was virtually criminal anyway.

90% of the blowback from 2008 was BECAUSE the financial markets were allowed to escape oversight or the oversight laws and regs were not enforced.

A free market is not a market without government oversight. Those are criminal markets. A free market is regulated by the government enough to ensure that there is tolerable amounts of criminality but they are not the market makers.

 

[Hiryuu]

The political process is HOW we control the grotesquely wealthy corporations. They have no right of self defense.

Good Luck.

 

[Hiryuu]

The 2008 fiasco was a combination of multiple breakdowns in our regulated financial industry, not only one cause, but most of them can be summarized as breakdowns in the oversight of the industry by the government.

The equity raters like Moody's dropped the ball and were giving AAA ratings to MBS's that were full of subprime rot and they knew were soon to be worthless as defaults on those subprimes turned the MBS into $0 profit paper.

This triggered the completely unregulated CDS payoffs 90% of which were held by people who owned none of the MBS's, which magnified the wealth destroyed by an order of magnitude.

That banks were able to escape the consequences of their abysmally bad loans by simply repackaging them as MBS's was virtually criminal anyway.

90% of the blowback from 2008 was BECAUSE the financial markets were allowed to escape oversight or the oversight laws and regs were not enforced.

A free market is not a market without government oversight. Those are criminal markets. A free market is regulated by the government enough to ensure that there is tolerable amounts of criminality but they are not the market makers.

You do understand that you outlined the fact the markets were regulated. The government failed to enforce the regulations, or established regulations that were ineffective, yet you are willing to give them the power to regulate more. It isn't that I am writing a blank check to the bankers, I'm just laughing at the desire to grant the incompetent more power.

(edit) As long as the general perception is to move from a more realistic "buyer beware", to a more incompetent "let's ask the government to fix it", you are going to end up with a convoluted mess of regulations that do nothing more than provide opportunities for people to fly under the radar selling junk as gold.

 

[SassyIrishLass]

I believe you missed the obvious. It is the political process (in Senator Warren's proposal) trying to mess with corporations, so what you really mean is that corporations shouldn't be able to defend themselves from our political process.

The political process is HOW we control the grotesquely wealthy corporations. They have no right of self defense.

Why do you think they need controlled?

 

[Hiryuu]

I believe you missed the obvious. It is the political process (in Senator Warren's proposal) trying to mess with corporations, so what you really mean is that corporations shouldn't be able to defend themselves from our political process.

The political process is HOW we control the grotesquely wealthy corporations. They have no right of self defense.

Why do you think they need controlled?

For the most part it is based in the misconception of who is actually in control of what, and the desire to wish it different. A concept most people abandon at an early age, and that only rekindles when optimism seems to be supported in numbers instead of reality.

 

[ThunderKiss1965]

That's not too far from the controls that the third reich imposed on the corporate entities that it allowed to continue operating.

More and more people are warming up to this kind of thing, as wealth inequality continues to expand.

I wonder how the GOP plans to provide the electorate with an answer, outside of screaming SOCIALISM AAUUGGHH, NAZI AAUUGGHH, and HITLER AAUUGGHH.
.

Cutting business regulation and encouraging economic growth. I haven't heard anything from democrats except actually calling people Nazi's and Hitler

 

[SassyIrishLass]

I believe you missed the obvious. It is the political process (in Senator Warren's proposal) trying to mess with corporations, so what you really mean is that corporations shouldn't be able to defend themselves from our political process.

The political process is HOW we control the grotesquely wealthy corporations. They have no right of self defense.

Why do you think they need controlled?

For the most part it is based in the misconception of who is actually in control of what, and the desire to wish it different. A concept most people abandon at an early age, and that only rekindles when optimism seems to be supported in numbers instead of reality.

I'm a capitalist and not fond of "controls".

 

[Mac1958]

Cutting business regulation and encouraging economic growth. I haven't heard anything from democrats except actually calling people Nazi's and Hitler

The thread in which you're posting is something. Perhaps you can provide a thoughtful and reasonable response.

The Meltdown of 2008 was in many ways the result of a lack of regulation. I'll be more than happy to go into detail, such as Alan Greenspan's abject refusal to regulate derivatives (begged for by CLTC Chair Brooksley Born), the complete lack of reserve requirements for credit default swaps, the fact that ratings agencies got away with selling AAA (Treasury-level) ratings for shit-filled CMOs and CDOs, zero regulation on the makeup or opacity of these shit securities, John Paulsen being free to create CDOs that were specifically created to fail so that he could short them (with the help of Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and others), Morgan Stanley and GS being free to short shit securities at the same time they were selling them, banks leveraging up to a stratospheric 30:1 and higher, and more.

Just ask.
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[Hiryuu]

I'm a capitalist and not fond of "controls".

Well, the reason for controls is much different, because they will always be nothing more than limits.

In an overreaching simplified broad sense (please forgive), it's doesn't matter how I feel about an Olympic Athlete winning a gold medal. I am not going to win a gold medal at the Olympics, if I don't do what is necessary to accomplish that goal. Society attempting to convince me I should be satisfied with a participation trophy, is never even going to get me to the Olympics, much less achieve a gold medal. If society wants to tell me it sucks to be a gold medal winner at the Olympics, they are just wrong.

Moral: Pragmatism is often mistaken for pessimism.

 

[Hiryuu]

The thread in which you're posting is something. Perhaps you can provide a thoughtful and reasonable response.

The Meltdown of 2008 was in many ways the result of a lack of regulation. I'll be more than happy to go into detail, such as Alan Greenspan's abject refusal to regulate derivatives (begged for by CLTC Chair Brooksley Born), the complete lack of reserve requirements for credit default swaps, the fact that ratings agencies got away with selling AAA (Treasury-level) ratings for shit-filled CMOs and CDOs, zero regulation on the makeup or opacity of these shit securities, John Paulsen being free to create CDOs that were specifically created to fail so that he could short them (with the help of Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and others), Morgan Stanley and GS being free to short shit securities at the same time they were selling them, banks leveraging up to a stratospheric 30:1 and higher, and more.

Just ask.
.

You can regulate their ability to do the things they did. You will never stop them from figuring out another way to do it. Until the people stop doing business with the banks that are screwing them over, there's nothing the government can really do about it (except take everything from everyone and pretend it is theirs). At that point you are going to have to understand the banks didn't work alone, and the government not only had oversight privileges, they were in the middle of it. That's why a bunch of people didn't get hauled to court and asked to testify, as well as why the people who were blamed, got a big fat parachute from the government.

 

[Weatherman2020]

Correct, because most people don't exist in a shallow, simplistic, binary world.

Most know that this all exists on a continuum, and that the key is striking the proper balance.
.

If people don’t like what a company does they don’t buy from that company. Ask Facebook and Twitter.

If people don’t like what an unelected and unaccountable Government agency does, too bad.
Ask anyone who’s had to deal with the IRS, BLM, EPA, etc etc.

The counter-argument is that because a corporation exists within a society in which there are many shared and symbiotic affects of behaviors, it must be held to a certain level of corporate responsibility and regulation. So the question, again, is striking the proper balance between pure free market capitalism and corporate responsibility.
.

So people go to prison because an unaccountable Government employee feels an employee was not treated “fairly”

Sounds like communism.

Then you don't know what communism is.

Communism is an economic system where there is no private ownership of anything.

The government owns everything in a communist economy.

Now, tell me how regulating corporations is the government taking ownership of a private corporation.

Well, in current conservative lexicon, "communism" means "any more government, anywhere, in any way, than we currently have."

Something like that.
.

Which is about what it is.
Unaccountable Government and communism has little differences.
Examples?
EPA telling a couple that the dream home they wished to build can’t be done because the land they bought is now wetlands. Even though there is no water even near their property.

A child wishes to sell lemonade on the corner and the city says close down because you haven’t bought permits.

A company wants to build a 12 cylinder car for high end customers. Government steps in and says you can’t build those here.

 

[edthecynic]

A good example of this is BO signed a bill supported by both parties, cutting social security benefits.

LIAR!