From: Chris Burford <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Floyd Norris: Has capital lost clout in world?
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/03/24/business/norris25.html
This analysis in the International Herald Tribune, is in my opinion fully compatible with a marxist analysis.
I do not understand the following comment of Norris at all: "With capital in a weakening position, returns that would once have gone to owners of capital now are redirected. That is one way to explain the surge in management compensation over the past two decades. In the early 1980s, when interest rates were high and stock prices low, the average U.S. chief executive got no stock options in any given year. Now nearly all get large grants, and one study found that chief executive pay rose faster than that of any group save for professional athletes and movie stars."
Amid all the pointless paper shuffling of leveraged buyouts and hostile takeovers during the 1980s, US CEOs somehow pulled off an amazing sleight of hand that transformed them in the public eye from timeserving hacks into heroic visionaries for whom no amount of compensation could ever be too much. Just to say there's excess capital in world doesn't explain how they accomplished this colossal swindle.
Carl
