Democratic Business: Big Government Means Big Business

Friday, August 28, 2009

Big Government Means Big Business

In general, federal regulation benefits big business, and local regulation favors small business. Small businesses offer greater freedom and prosperity. Big business stiffles freedom, competition, and prosperity. You can be assured that big business will get bigger unless regulating power is decentralized to local governments. Here are two examples of the Big Government/Big Business effect:

Banks at Risk of Failure Has Reached 15-Year High
Banking regulators are warning that the number of banks at risk of failure has reached a fifteen-year high. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation said the number of “problem banks” had risen from 305 to 416 during the second quarter. The FDIC has already shut down eighty-one banks this year. This comes at a time when the nation’s largest banks are getting even bigger due to a series of federally arranged mergers and taxpayer bailouts. JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Citigroup now issue one of every two mortgages and about two of every three credit cards. JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo now each hold more than ten percent of the nation’s deposits, despite a rule barring such a practice.

Taxpayers to Pay Banks Billions to Fix Loan Mess: A new report by the Center for Public Integrity has found that any of the lenders that helped fuel the housing crisis by issuing risky subprime loans are now lining up to receive more than $21 billion in taxpayer money intended to help bail out borrowers. At least twenty-one out of the top twenty-five participants in the Making Home Affordable program specialized in servicing or originating subprime loans.
(Examples taken from DemocracyNow!)

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How Will You Measure Your Life?

I recently read this article by Clayton Christiansen out of Harvard entitled, “How will you measure your life?” It is what he tells his students on the final day of his class.

One of the items that he mentions sticks out to me. It reads as follows:

“One of the theories, . . . . . how to be sure we find happiness in our careers—is from Frederick Herzberg, who asserts that the powerful motivator in our lives isn’t money; it’s the opportunity to learn, grow in responsibilities, contribute to others, and be recognized for achievements. I tell the students about a vision of sorts I had while I was running the company I founded before becoming an academic. In my mind’s eye I saw one of my managers leave for work one morning with a relatively strong level of self-esteem. Then I pictured her driving home to her family 10 hours later, feeling unappreciated, frustrated, underutilized, and demeaned. I imagined how profoundly her lowered self-esteem affected the way she interacted with her children. The vision in my mind then fast-forwarded to another day, when she drove home with greater self-esteem—feeling that she had learned a lot, been recognized for achieving valuable things, and played a significant role in the success of some important initiatives. I then imagined how positively that affected her as a spouse and a parent. My conclusion: Management is the most noble of professions if it’s practiced well. No other occupation offers as many ways to help others learn and grow, take responsibility and be recognized for achievement, and contribute to the success of a team. More and more [people think] that a career in business means buying, selling, and investing in companies. That’s unfortunate. Doing deals doesn’t yield the deep rewards that come from building up people."

I’m sure you can see why it sticks out.