If corporations are engaging in a "capital strike"

[Lydia Leftcoast]

34. I have not seen such a continuous string of Chicago School-influenced

business school B.S. in one place in a long time.

The economy and the Holy Sacred Almighty Markets That We Are Not Worthy To Regulate, Amen, are not abstractions. They are the sum of the actions of individuals. Individuals can change their actions. Other individuals are affected by things that happen as the result of these actions. Some individuals, due to their great wealth or power, can screw over the rest of us in ways that are downright sociopathic.

My father's hometown is the headquarters of a nationally known company, still privately held, that is highly profitable and yet treats its workers decently. If business is slow, the owners make the sacrifice to avoid laying off workers, since they are by far the largest employers in town.

Conventional b-school wisdom says they should be in trouble, since they are going against the financial interests of the shareholders, the founders' descendants. But no, they're doing great.

I (and some of my friends who know Japan even better than I do) trace Japan's "lost decade" not only to a burst real estate bubble but to their adoption of "international" (i.e. cutthroat American) business practices, with the resulting foreign outsourcing, reluctance to hire any but temporary employees, and killing of local businesses by voracious retail and restaurant chains.

It's interesting, isn't it, that the countries in northern Europe that are doing the worst or that went through crises are precisely the ones that adopted conservative economic policies: Iceland, Ireland (once the poster child for conservative economics, now with double-digit unemployment), Britain (in a double-dip recession), and Latvia (trying to balance its budget on the backs of the poor and middle class with a 25% VAT).