Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Lobbyists rule the world!!

I just read two pieces about the influence of lobbyists on policy making.  The first is a general piece:  all important policy in Washington and Lansing has been vetted by lobbyists.   It presents a Smith-like argument:  we no longer live in a democracy, we live in a plutocracy (see here)    .  The second is a more academic look at Basel III and how it is most likely inadequate as an international tool to strengthen the international financial sector through requiring banks to have adequate reserves (see here).  One last citation:  go to this site and see who funded President Obama's 2008 election bid--no wnder GE doesn't pay taxes. 
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3 comments:

  1. Andrew ManorApril 5, 2011 at 12:59 PM

    I thought Bill Moyer had an interesting segment in the first article...

    "Why isn't government working for them? Because it's been bought off. It's as simple as that. And until we get clean money we're not going to get clean elections, and until we get clean elections, you can kiss goodbye government of, by, and for the people. Welcome to the plutocracy."

    It's hard for me to believe that a major election will be funded with "clean money" only because there's always someone trying to get ahead of their competition by doing things the dirty way. I think this plutocracy has been around for decades and is just a part of today's political and business worlds.

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  2. JaredCohenApril 5, 2011 at 8:52 PM

    I thought the campaign contributions list was especially interesting. What I noticed was that the big banks (Goldman, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley) all gave significantly more contributions to Barack Obama than to John McCain. Did this surprise anybody else? I would have figured that it would have been the opposite. Is there an explanation for this?

    I was also surprised to see the colleges and universities donating to Obama's campaign. I can understand the Harvards and Columbias of the world donating, but a public institution like the University of California seemed surprising to me, especially considering the financial struggles in California.

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  3. Ankur JainApril 5, 2011 at 10:09 PM

    The list of campaign contributions doesn't surprise me as much now as it might have earlier. I can see why Obama has appointed so many former executives, board members, and advisors at major corporations to major cabinet positions since they made such major contributions to his campaign. If you google the appointments that have some relation to Goldman Sach's the names of Dick Gephardt, William Dudley, Elena Kagan, and many more show up. It just makes me skeptical of Obama's attack on the big banks that lead us into the financial crisis in the first place. Obama is just continuing a trend of his predecessors. It's like Goldman Sachs people are taking over the government!

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