In this week's Off The Cuff podcast, Chris and Charles Hugh Smith discuss:
- The Impact Of Natural Disasters
- There are always surprise ramifications
- Unequal Oversight
- Corporations skate free while individuals get nailed
- Why The Government Allows Corporate Rackets
- There's just too much money in play
- Where Is The Tipping Point?
- When does the abused populace say "No more!"
The government is not famous for its efficiency, or for its fairness. In many cases, that's intentional — particularly when you look at the incentives in play. Charles explains why our crony capitalist system is allowed, and even protected from enforcement: it's simply too cheap for corporations to influence government policy, regulation and oversight:
This is something that I've had a long interest in, which is the amount of money that you need to basically buy political influence or power is relatively modest. It's on the order of…if you spent $10 million, you can buy a lot of Congress folks or a lot of agencies and you can arrange the revolving door and get your folks into the regulatory agency and so on.
Let's even kick it up to $100 million. Well, if you get control of that or can influence that governance structure, you can reap billions. I have a database that one of my readers sent me. He laboriously went through all the Department of Justice actions against corporations for what amounted to violations of securities laws and anti-cartel racketeering. All the corporate crimes that could have a financial benefit.
by edwardelinski 
