Corporate capitalism is still a young puppy ...

Folks, corporate capitalism is still a young puppy as far as these things go, kind of running around and knocking things over.

Remember Ike and the Federal Highway Program? He learned from the things FDR tried and pretty much got it right. Our streets and highways ignited the auto industry out of the industrial base grown in WWII. (Weren't those muscle cars something else?) Then Kennedy came along and gave us the Man on the Moon project which became the ground out of which grew so many new products and industries that it still boggles the mind. (Start thinking of what our global financial gurus have sent offshore ... and somebody wants to continue enabling the neocons in the GOP? Are you kidding me?)

Out of 50's amd 60's we began to learn how government and business could work together to produce a free middle class.

(No, I haven't forgotten the Korean and Vietnam Wars, and they have to be dealt with economically speaking at some point.)

Trouble is ... there is a fly in the ointment ... which we are just now beginning to realize as "Dr." Greenspan said, "a flaw" in his thinking.

And it is so simple it is mind-boggling.

Because the corporation is treated in law as a separate entity, the individual corporate officers can pump all of the corporation's profits into their private pockets without penalty ... except in regulated businesses.

And with the MBA mantra of the pursuit of self-interest as the highest free market value, individuals have been conspiring to keep certain high short-term profit businesses unregulated as long as possible in order to enrich themselves ... individually. Long-term consequences be damned ... they are the corporation as a separate entity's problem.

By 2006 Depfa was the largest buyer of last resort in the world, standing behind $2.9 billion of bonds issued that year alone. It backed a $200 million bond issued by the M.T.A.

But as Depfa grew, it became more reliant on enormous short-term loans to finance its operations. Those loans cost less, and thus helped the bank achieve higher profits, but only when times were good. Indeed, some employees were worried about that debt.

But Mr. Bruckermann plowed ahead, and it paid off. In 2007, even as the global economy was softening, Mr. Bruckermann persuaded one of Germany’s biggest lenders, Hypo Real Estate, to purchase Depfa for $7.8 billion. Mr. Bruckermann’s cut was more than $150 million. He left the company to grow oranges on his Spanish estate.

From Midwest to M.T.A., Pain From Global Gamble

By CHARLES DUHIGG and CARTER DOUGHERTY
Published: November 1, 2008
Print edition: November 2, 2008
NY Times

It's greed ... pure and simple greed.

Who would have ever thought? Certainly not an Ayn Rand disciple like "Dr." Greenspan.

We'd better start training that puppy. And the current GOP is not likely to do it.