Corporations Quotes
Leaders of nations for years only trusted as truly patriotic those man—usually nobles of the aristocracy—who owned land. If an invader came and seized their land, they would lose their wealth. However money is fungible, and a banker can easily move his money abroad and join another nation or side in a war. If the country is ruined by war, the manufacturer cannot obtain labor or raw materials, The financier depends on none of these and so hs not the vested interest in the welfare of the nation.
Roosevelt was running again for the presidency, however this time as a Third Party Candidate. He lost to Woodrow Wilson but outpolled the Republicans. This was the Third Party performance since Abraham Lincoln.
Many companies appear to be doing much better than they really are. Often they employ PR professionals to create that impression. Some companies are not even solvent, but the only way we can all tell is to have a recession generally or in that particular sector—the equivalent of the tide going out.
Ironically the far right wing Fascists and the far left wing Communists agreed on this point: nationalization.
In his economic view, managers, accountants, attorneys, owners, shareholders, landlords, were all supported by the workers who have to support themselves and all the others.
In TR’s era, major corporations and trusts controlled many Federal, State, and local officials by various methods, the Most pernicious of which was bribery. Most major corporations had their own legislators, judges and executive officials.
“Combination” was then a word for a large corporate enterprise, monopoly or trust. Although large corporations are common in the modern economy, at the time there were very few of them and most of them use their power to crush competition and take advantage of helpless consumer. Instead of banning largeness as some wanted to do, President Theodore Roosevelt and others chose regulation, and the Sherman Antitrust Act and the Clayton Antitrust Act were passed. Individualism in the form of small businesses have proved amazingly resilient and have developed into a giants like Microsoft and a Google. Over half a of the new jobs created in our economy are done so by small businesses.
Leveraged means that the company is not investing all its own money and has borrowed some or much in a highly leveraged situation. He, and most corporate executives, used to be very wary of corporations being highly leveraged. However towards the end of the 20th century the CEO’s—ironically especially in banks and financial companies who should have known better, tended to get away from this worry, and led their companies to very highly leveraged situations. When the Meltdown of 2008 hit, most were so highly leveraged that they became insolvent very quickly and the Great Recession followed.
Roosevelt was on a crusade to eliminate the vicious monopolies and trusts of the time. The number of terms he used to describe them was large but this has become the most memorable and most frequently quoted. See {585244} for some of the other terms he used. While this phrase was original with FDR, his relative, Theodore Roosevelt, used the term “malefactors” in a similar meaning in {585244}.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910. The nature of telephone technology made it easy for companies to obtain monopolies for different areas of the country. When there is a monopoly, there is a huge tendency for the controlling company to charge very high prices and have poor customer service as the usual competition required for quality performance under capitalism is nonexistant. So in 1890, there was the same resentment of the telephone companies, that existed over a century later when there was still a monopoly. Regulation helped somewhat, but the capabilities of the monopolist began to include lobbying and campaign contributions so that typically, in the 21st century, the local telephone companies had much control over the State Commissions that were supposed to regulate them. Long distance service, whose monopoly was broken up by the Federal Courts became a wonderful service for customers and the prices were a tiny fraction of what they had been under their old monopoly.
This warning was a decade before the Meltdown of 2008, but was not heeded by any of the politicians. As a result a number of the companies that made all those risky decisions assumed that if something went terribly wrong the government would not let them fail. Unfortunately, they were right and the taxpayers spent billions to prevent companies from failing. After the meltdown all the politicians vowed to end the too big to fail concept, but while some improvements were made, the Congress could not come to agreement, and the markets and a number of companies think that they are still too big to fail. This is particularly true for Defense Contractors where the government has and probably will in the future, protect irresponsible companies from failure if they are the only company that makes needed weapons and other equipment.
Corporate Executives had urged that the laws requiring overtime pay for more than a 40 hour week be put in abeyance for the remainder of the war. Increased production was necessary for the war effort and manpower was getting short. When the Automobile Workers Union proposed that the wealthy executives also accept “patriotic” limits, the executives wanted little part in that plan. The manpower pressure was relieved when women entered the manufacturing plants but most executives and male union members and officers did not think that women could possibly be even as productive. They were wrong as women learned critical skills as they had the opportunity and out-produced the pre-war men.
While President Barack Obama was primarily frequently insulted by white conservatives, black left-wingers also went after him.
