In this week’s readings, Elizabeth Hanson highlighted the fact that not only are people becoming more connected via globalization, but that our currencies, financial transactions, and corporations are entangling countries together more and more as well. Some of the more worrisome realities from the reading is that “trade in currencies exceeds the values of international trade in goods and services”[1], that money can flow into and out of a country within seconds, and that this lack of regulation is “creating a world of manias and panics.[2]”
With the financial meltdown of 2008 that spread across the world, the ongoing recession, and the US presidential election bringing financial regulation and corporate policies to the forefront, I find this to be a very relevant topic to discuss today. Right now the rhetoric around financial and corporate regulation is that of ‘economic freedom’ and that government ‘should not interfere’. Presidential candidate Mitt Romney even goes so far as saying “Companies are people.”[3] Have we lost the ability of hindsight? Did we forget about Enron, WorldComm, Anderson Accounting, Adelphia, Countrywide Financial, Lehman Bros.? When millions (perhaps billions) of dollars has been lost over corrupt and selfish business practices, shouldn’t a more cautious approach be applied to regulation and not one of laissez-faire attitude?
My belief is that companies are not people, they are entities created to generate a profit, a profit for shareholders and clients in the case of public and financial companies. Notice “shareholders” does not mean all of the public, most shareholders in companies, and clients of large financial services companies, are only those people who have disposable income and can afford to invest their money in companies. A large number of people across this country, and across the world do not represent “shareholders” and are not included in this group.Ultimately it is a dangerous path to equate companies as people. We cannot have such a short memory to forget that the lack of regulations, speculative practices, and a corrupt mortgage industry that took advantage of individuals created the unstable and insecure world we live in today.
Many MNC’s have more capital than most of the nation-states on the planet[4] and with that comes great responsibility, we haven’t seen corporations take this responsibility dependably and conscientiously. It begs me to ask the question, are we really that far away from a world pictured in the Pixar movie Wall-E where Buy N' Large runs the world?
[1] Hanson, E. C. (2008). The Information Revolution and World Politics. p. 147
[2] Ibid, p. 150
[4] Hanson, E. C. (2008). The Information Revolution and World Politics. p. 161
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