The "Barge"Economy in the US

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=business_is_booming

Harold Meyerson picks up and expands a story that we have been pursuing on this blog and elsewhere. When Jack Welch was CEO of GE he said that the ideal company would be able to put its business on barge and put it anywhere where the currency and changes to the economy indicated the best opportunities. Well it has been done. America's multinationals, which account for 74% of US sales, have put their companies on barges and that is where the jobs have been going and this has been very good for corporate profits which are at historic highs even as they have shedded US jobs. Those jobs are not coming back and even though the Obama administration understands the problem, they have no plan for dealing with issue. They are married to a vision of an economy that rewards the top executives of multinationals and their stockholders along with a banking system that no longer has a mission of allocating capital to its most productive purposes in the US.

Meyerson, contrasts Germany with the US to make some important points. Germany has a export based economy despite average hourly wages that are much higher than those in the US. How have they done this? At a deep level our economies operate with a different philosophy. US corporations along with those in the UK, are guided by a single goal of increasing shareholder value. This differs from the German economy which operates under a goal of satisfying the needs of its stakeholders which include its labor force. The German banking system is also very different. The banks in each locality serve the businesses in their locality. The small business sector has access to the funds needed to innovate and develop the new businesses that the economy requires. The US banking system no longer operates under the premise that local banks are there to serve local businesses. Changes to banking laws have opened up local markets to competition from national banks that have no particular concern for local businesses. Many of these banks have moved to the loan origination business where they originate the loans and sell them to Wall Street.

In a Democracy, one would imagine that the electorate would look out for its own interests. This requires an electorate that is informed and empowered to take actions to improve its well-being. We do not have that kind of electorate in the US. The media has done of poor job of informing the public and and it even engages in disinformation. How could it be otherwise when the media are owned by multinational corporations and when corporate advertisers influence program decisions by discretion in what programming they will fund with their advertising dollars.