Monthly Archives: October 2013

10.13.13
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Democratic capitalism achieves communism’s goal

Phillip Adams’ was bemoaning the failures of capitalism this week in The Weekend Australian, adding it to the pile of other failed ‘isms’ and he points out that we need new answers to stem the widening gulf between those that have and those that don’t. He proposes a hybrid economic model.

We don’t need to invent a hybrid. We have already done it, we just don’t recognise it. Democratic capitalism has succeeded in achieving communism’s ultimate goal. It has shifted the ownership of the means of production to the citizens away from unelected elites. In most Western nations, the citizens provide the money for substantial chunks of the equity markets and the bond markets. It is just when we put our money into our retirement funds, managed by institutional investors, the ownership of those funds is suddenly assigned to those institutional investors. Our money become ‘their investments’. When really, these investors are merely managing our money and it is our money that buys the shares (which are units of ownership in companies), so we own the companies. The key is to make the institutional investors listen to a wider array of voices as to what constitutes a long-term ‘value’ building in a company.

The problem is we are still living in an age that assigns a higher moral value to people with money (or control of other people’s money) rather than people with knowledge. We lionise business leaders for their ability to make money, not their ability to change the world for the better. We agonise that we will not have enough money in retirement to maintain our lifestyle, so we turn a blind eye to bad company behaviour in favour of returns. We value our ability to buy things, more than our ability to understand things.

Perversely though, more and more of us comfortable in our middle class lives are getting uncomfortable about how big business is shaping our society, our planet and the futures of those who may not have the opportunity to worry about whether to go to Bali or holiday at home this year.

If we want this to change, we have to challenge this power structure and its associated values. We need to engage with institutional investors and get them to step up to the plate in engaging with company management and boards on issues that matter to us. We need investors not to punish companies on the stock market when they choose to do something that is better for all of us in the long term, but shaves off some profit in the short term.

Institutional investors need to democratise investing and create opportunities for people to engage with them and share their views. A starting point may be a simple online tool, like Vote Compass. It was used in the latest Australian election to help voters understand what mattered to them and which party best represented their views. A similar tool could help institutional investors understand how we feel about particular issues. Institutional investors could then represent these views to senior managements of companies and hold them to account on behalf of us all.

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10.02.13
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Greed unfettered by conscience reigns again

Five years ago, the US government and regulators allowed investment bank Lehman Brothers to collapse.  The bank was to be the example to the industry of what happens when greed and the pursuit of profit at all costs prevails.

Sadly, it appears they didn’t learn a thing. Greed unfettered by conscience remains the order of the day.

Investment banks exist to grease the wheels of the economic machine, bringing investors and businesses together. These servants of company development and economic growth, however, appear to have transformed themselves into the masters of the corporate universe.

Investment banks’ role is to arrange companies’ borrowing, issues of shares and conduct a lot of the share trading and broker merger and takeover activity. They put people with money together with people who want that money to invest in their business. This means they have a vested interest in promoting lots of activity, which is what generates their revenue. So it doesn’t matter whether a deal creates long-term social and economic problems or not, their only interest is deals being created. How else will they hit the targets that pay their gigantic bonuses?

Now the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer is going into bat for the financial services sector to protect their ‘right’ to receive uncapped bonuses. There is grave concern that the bonus cap may led to an increase in base pay and that top ‘talent’ may go to non-European competitors who don’t have to comply with the cap. To be clear, the bonus cap will only apply to those who earn more than €500,000 (~$AUD720,000) a year….so they are hardly on struggle street. But a pay packet of this size is not about being paid what someone is worth, it is a way of gaining status through a comparison with peers.

Perhaps a walk along struggle street might help the investment bankers reassess their views about the reward they need to carry on their work. It may also give them some perspective about the devastating impact of their sector’s behaviour and how long it takes to recover. Right now, More than 46 million Americans are living in poverty and the median household slipped, all thanks the hangover created by the global financial crisis. While job growth may by recovering in the richest country in the world, the jobs are in low paying sectors of retail and restaurants. Meanwhile, the stock markets are recovering and the bankers are getting their bonuses again.

Earlier this year, the investment banking industry was asked to explain why they charge institutional investors for access to the chief executives of their client companies, often without the companies even knowing. The investment banks don’t provide the money for anything, institutional investors on our behalf do. Institutional investors need to exercise their financial muscles to wrestle the investment bankers back into their role as servants.

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