Wall Street Journal (December 2)
“Like much of corporate America today, the Nasdaq is virtue signaling at the expense of someone else. This is far from its reason for being, which is a marketplace to raise money while spreading the benefits of capitalism and corporate ownership. Imposing its own identity politics on some 3,300 listed companies meddles in corporate management and will harm economic growth and job creation.” [Nasdaq is seeking minimum quotas of women and minority/LGBTQ directors on corporate boards.]
Tags: Capitalism, Corporate America, Growth, Identity politics, Job creation, Management, Marketplace, Money, Nasdaq, Ownership, Virtue signaling
Business Insider (October 5)
“Pope Francis echoed Warren Buffett in blaming unfettered capitalism for rising inequality in a letter to the Catholic Church’s bishops titled Fratelli Tutti over the weekend.” The Pontiff “pointed to the pandemic’s fallout, including massive unemployment spikes around the world, as evidence that ‘not everything can be resolved by market freedom.’”
Tags: Buffett, Capitalism, Catholic, Fallout, Francis, Fratelli Tutti, Inequality, Market freedom, Pandemic, Pope, Unemployment, Unfettered
The Economist (May 25)
“Most of the rich world is enjoying a jobs boom of unprecedented scope. Not only is work plentiful, but it is also, on average, getting better. Capitalism is improving workers’ lot faster than it has in years, as tight labour markets enhance their bargaining power.”
Tags: Bargaining power, Capitalism, Jobs boom, Labour markets, Plentiful, Rich world, Unprecedented scope, Work, Workers
The Economist (February 2)
“The iron-ore mines in Minas Gerais look like roughshod capitalism let loose.” On Monday, a tailing dam break released “a wave of sludge that may have killed more than 350 people,” making this “one of the worst tailings tragedies in history.” Furthermore, “this is the second such disaster in which” Vale, the mine operator, has been “implicated in just over three years.” This disaster should be a “cause for soul-searching” for Vale and for the global mining industry.
Tags: Capitalism, Disaster, Iron ore, Minas Gerais, Mining industry, Sludge, Soul-searching, Tailing dam, Vale
New York Times (October 30)
The rising populism in Germany and around the globe “is not the anger of a classic loony fringe, but rather mainstream people striking out at elites who they believe have lost touch with reality and common sense. To many here, the refugee crisis, the euro crisis, the Ukraine crisis and the threats seen in an unleashed global capitalism have converged in a fundamental question: Do the mighty still know what they are doing?”
Tags: Anger, Capitalism, Common sense, Elites, Euro crisis, Fringe, Germany, Mainstream, Populism, Reality, Refugees, Ukraine
Chicago Tribune (August 13)
“China’s adolescent angst” is to be expected. Apparent wealth and strength aside, “it’s helpful to keep some perspective on a place that was impoverished and practically irrelevant 35 years ago. Despite its size, the Chinese economy is still an underdeveloped work in progress, fumbling through the transition from closed communism to some form of market-driven capitalism.”
Tags: Adolescent, Angst, Capitalism, China, Communism, Economy, Fumbling, Impoverished, Transition, Underdeveloped
The Economist (November 1)
“Leading students of capitalism have been pronouncing the death rites of family companies for decades” and yet these firms continue to thrive. Indeed, “the proportion of Fortune 500 companies that can be described as family companies increased from 15% in 2005 to 19% today.” One reason for their resilience is that family firms “have got better at addressing their obvious weaknesses.”
Wall Street Journal (August 7)
“The most striking fact about the recently announced sale of the Boston Globe and Washington Post is their low prices…. The prices reflect the decline of newspapers as a business in the Internet age, which is the kind of creative destruction millions of Americans have experienced. Disruption is the price a capitalist economy pays for innovation, and the news business is merely the latest example.” The new owners should be welcomed as they provide “an opportunity for new ideas and perhaps a turnaround.”
Tags: Boston Globe, Capitalism, Creative destruction, Decline, Disruption, Ideas, Innovation, Internet, Newspapers, Opportunity, Owners, Prices, Turnaround, Washington Post
Washington Post (May 13, 2013)
“It’s been five years since the onset of the financial crisis — the rescue of Bear Stearns in March 2008 — and we still don’t know whether the financial system is safe.” Progress has clearly been made, but whether it’s sufficient or even the right sort remains very much to be seen. “Will Dodd-Frank save capitalism or suffocate it? It may be years before we know.”
Forbes (March 25)
The world’s ranks of billionaires has expanded to 1,426 and as a group they are richer than ever. “The impressive increase in the net worth of the world’s billionaires and the fact that there are 200 more of these folks than there were a year ago will have leftists everywhere decrying the growing gap between the haves and the have-nots…. But don’t blame these rich…. The overwhelming majority of these people have moved ahead through meeting the needs and wants of other people, not through inheritances or crony capitalism. Their successes didn’t come at the expense of everyone else. Free-market capitalism is not a zero-sum system.”
Tags: Billionaires, Capitalism, Free market, Have nots, Haves, Inheritance, Success
