The Republican Party has been known for some time as the party of businessmen and business in general.  They have championed the deregulation of markets and the reduction of corporate taxes as well as reduced taxation of the wealthy in America with increased vigor in the last 28 years.  Now as we see Max Baucus & Co. doing their song and dance on Capitol Hill, we are beginning to see how the Democratic Party has come to be a protector of big business's interests as well.  The power of business is money, and business's financial resources are vast.  The lobbyists representing corporate interests in Washington D.C. know precisely how to administer it in order to get the wheels of democracy to turn if ever so slightly in the direction Big Business wants.

Today, the real opponents to reform in our country are likely not to be Republicans per se, nor the Democrats for that matter.  The real powers arrayed to subvert sound public policy that will benefit us all are the corporations, and more particularly the very large corporations.  Every law we write affects the status quo and the existing revenue streams staked out by big business as it navigates our labyrinthine tax code and public policy in search of financial enrichment.  These revenue streams are guarded with no less self interest than were the privately owned ferries and toll roads of yesteryear and we are not invited to cross before payment has been extracted from us.  One need only look at healthcare for which we pay twice as much as the rest of the world, and the corporate resistance to the kind of sweeping change our healthcare system so clearly demands.  It's worth taking some time to know an adversary that challenges any change to policies which might adversely impact corporate profits,  while instead favoring policies that further corporate self interest even at the expense of the public good.  If we take the writings of Sun-Tzu and Machiavelli at face value, we would be fools to do otherwise.

Proponents of Business's philosophy will make the case that America's own interests lie in conjunction with Business's interests.  It is true that we benefit from a strong economy in which business is expanding, and our system favors innovation in the marketplace which is all good, however the interests of business are not synonymous with the interests of Americans or those of mankind.    Business is at its' heart amoral, and it is only through the force of the personalities conducting business that it can ever be otherwise.  The recurring refrain we hear "that business is first and foremost accountable to its' shareholders" should be of concern to all of us not vested in these corporations as well as those who are shareholders.  Some of our largest corporations conducted 'business as usual' with the Nazi regime up to and even after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.  Morality was not a consideration of this support born of ideological disdain for Communism which business feared worse than the Nazi regime that brought us the Holocaust as well as up to 71M other deaths worldwide.  Business's products in general and armaments in particular have a way of finding their way to any and all conflicts and to all political factions regardless of moral or ethical position.  Unlike water seeking the lowest level, business's products seek all levels, as business is not bound by political, moral, and ideological apogees or perigees.  If there is money to be made, business will explore the avenues in which it can be made without concern for ethics or regard for social altruism.

Our concern with the influence wielded by Big Business should be magnified by the size of multinational corporations today that now places 51 corporations in the top 100 economies on the planet.  The remaining 49 are countries.  Taking corporations in aggregate, our healthcare sector alone comprises an economy larger than Great Britain's.  As such corporations have become extremely powerful entities in our current paradigm of the world, and we've extended extraordinary rights to them.  We've seen the corporate flag of America.  I wonder if some day there will be new corporate flags of the world, on which each corporation's client state's flags are engraved like a notch on the handle of a gunslinger's instrument of destruction.

Within the past six months, I poetically compared business to "locusts", entities that would feed on our financial and economic resources without concern for the depletion of our reserves, before moving off to the next field.  That description was not entirely accurate.  Big Business differs from a simple R selected species like the locust or grasshopper in one very important way.  Business is shortsighted, but not stupid.  Business will always make sure there is another field waiting for them before harvesting the resources of an existing field into depletion.   We saw the tobacco companies abandon the American field when the political and judicial climate became too difficult for them here.  They didn't miss a beat in expanding tobacco production and sales to China where 1.3 billion potential consumers awaited them with a zero probability of the company having to settle a multi-billion class action lawsuit on behalf of cancer victims. 

Almost seventy per cent of our economy consists of consumer spending and yet the hallmark of Business's strategy to cope with our economic crisis has been an ongoing reduction in their workforce.  Germany for example chose to subsidize reduced work weeks in exchange for turning employees out of their jobs and onto the unemployment roles while American government and corporations have chosen RIF as a solution to the economic crisis. I previously had thought the large percentage of our economy, which is tied to domestic spending would be a driving factor to align Big Business's self interest with the peoples self interest in preserving jobs at all costs if only to preserve revenue streams tied to the domestic economy.  After all if Americans are out of work and concerned about their economic future, they will not be buying the products from which many of these companies make their profits.  What I was not factoring into my reasoning was the 'enlightened locust' component of Big Business's strategy.  I now am beginning to see that as America's domestic economy, fueled by 330M consumers shrinks, China's domestic economy, powered by 1.3B consumers is growing.  It is a simple matter of mathematics.  Small gains for the multinational corporations in the China market as well as other new markets will easily offset losses due to the displacement of American workers from their jobs.

China will be the third largest consumer nation by 2025.  China will become the third largest consumer of luxury goods - by 2015 China will account for 29% of global luxury consumption.

The ability to weather regional economic calamity by switching markets is largely what is meant when you hear advocates expound on the benefits of a global economy.  Unfortunately, as individuals we don't exist globally as corporations do.  We are more or less constrained to living locally.  So business and corporations are at a distinct advantage in the sense of being able to bridge international markets as economic conditions dictate while the citizens of the countries they do business in are consigned to adapt to whatever conditions befall the economy in which they reside.  This is exacerbated by the current paradigm in DC where money seems to be defining all but the most public of debates, and even then business and the financial clout the corporations wield seems to enjoy an advantage.  Even though President Obama was able to raise $750M from small individual donors in his recent campaign, the businesses who donate large sums of money to his and other politicians seem to have our politicians' ears to an inordinate degree as evidenced by the deal cut behind closed doors with PHARMA in healthcare reform as well as other signs sent to Big Business, more or less indicating that we Americans don't mind paying extra for what the rest of the world gets at a fraction of the cost. 

Perhaps the most distressing fact of all is that the conditions that allowed our current economic debacle to occur were fostered as a direct result of Big Business's efforts to influence the political and regulatory climate in the US.  And we have yet to meaningfully address the conditions which allowed our economy to deteriorate, dragging the rest of the world down with it.  Small wonder that there are global undercurrents pushing for changing the world's reserve currency from the dollar to some new standard.  Doing so would be another blow to the US and the advantages we enjoy by controlling the de facto reserve currency of the world.  One might expect such high stakes to invoke a massive investigation into the events, manipulations, and mistakes that led up to the economic collapse so as to help avoid repeating such a scenario which would damage the dollar's reputation perhaps beyond repair.  However to date the only investigation initiated is a bipartisan Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission created by Congress in May.  In the words of Frank Rich this past Sunday:

It is still hiring staff. Its 10 members are dispersed throughout the country, and, according to a spokeswoman, have contemplated only a half-dozen public sessions over the next year. Such a panel, led by the former California state treasurer Phil Angelides, seems highly unlikely to match Congress's Depression-era Pecora commission.

 We've been conditioned to think that as goes big business so goes the US.  Certainly if you work for a fortune 500 company your personal fortune is intimately tied to the financial health of your employer.  I think the rest of the country's relationship with Big Business is more complex than that.  Business is as much adversary as it is ally in this day and age.  The sooner we acknowledge that fact the better off we will be as a society in being able to institute economic and political policy that makes sense for us all and not just a few hundred entrenched corporations.  Adopting the philosophy of Business as our own is akin to turning the reigns of our country and the world over to a tribe of Nihilists.

Note:  In order to keep this blog to a more reasonable size, I've decided to break it into two parts.  Tomorrow: PART 2:  How to Improve your Sex Life, Make Money, and Lose Weight©