Re: [PEN-L] capital lost clout?
I take your point - for those CEO's with the highest profile and some sort of media personal interest angle. I also take the earlier point that some of the articles about tightening up financial accountability are typical of the anxieties that arise as the economic cycle passes its peak and heads towards tougher times for returns on capital. On the other hand I maintain the secular trend is for the regulation of financial risk increasingly to be just another function of the overall management of finance capital in its increasingly highly socialised form. The media can pursue the celebrity CEO's but the financial intelligentsia who run the funds will want to know how soundly the financial department of individual companies is run. They will not want to see expenditure on too many CEO celebrities if simple control procedures combined with less glamorous high flyers can be part of an effective mix of technical skills and technology. The means of production continue to socialise themselves within the framework of private ownership. Chris Burford PS the thread title relates to a shorter term secular phenomenon - the turn in the capitalist cycle, which has been disguised by the central banks pumping liquidity into the market at low interest rates to prevent an economic crisis, in which there is in a sense too much capital - too much unproductive capital - for the amount of surplus value that can be accumulated. Globally capital is at a tactical disadvantage, and will remain so until a proportion has been killed off. eg a proportion of US capital by Chinese capital? - Original Message - From: "Michael Perelman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Sunday, March 27, 2005 10:56 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] capital lost clout? The public may resent high CEO pay, but it makes CEOs part of the celebrity culture. Why would anyone take an interest in Donald Trump. Jack Welch was a rock star of business -- until the aftermath of his divorce. Remember Lee Iaccoca? Carrol writes: >A) Does the public as a whole see CEOs in that light? I haven't >paid much attention to the matter, but my vague impression is that a large share of the public (i) disapproves heartily of high pay for CEOs but (ii) doesn't think anything can be done about it, and anyhow other issues are more important< -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Re: [PEN-L] capital lost clout?
The public may resent high CEO pay, but it makes CEOs part of the celebrity culture. Why would anyone take an interest in Donald Trump. Jack Welch was a rock star of business -- until the aftermath of his divorce. Remember Lee Iaccoca? > Carrol writes: > >A) Does the public as a whole see CEOs in that light? I haven't paid > much attention to the matter, but my vague impression is that a large > share of the public (i) disapproves heartily of high pay for CEOs but > (ii) doesn't think anything can be done about it, and anyhow other > issues are more important< > -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Re: [PEN-L] capital lost clout?
Carl Remick wrote: > 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. Carrol writes: >A) Does the public as a whole see CEOs in that light? I haven't paid much attention to the matter, but my vague impression is that a large share of the public (i) disapproves heartily of high pay for CEOs but (ii) doesn't think anything can be done about it, and anyhow other issues are more important< The public as a whole seems irrelevant (if not nonexistent) at this point. What's important is whether or not there's a significant fraction of the working class that is conscious of these paychecks and can be moved away from the predominant cynicism. >B) It's not a swindle -- it's merely one way of dividing up the surplus among those who extract it. A squabble between bond holders and shareholders doesn't concern us, and neither does a squabble between rentier capitalists and activist capitalists.< This kind of squabble can be relevant to the actual behavior of actually-existing capitalism. Intra-capitalist competition is part of the origins of crises of various sorts. The fact that Bushism isn't the ideology of the whole US capitalist class, for example, seems pretty relevant to how concrete politics (of the sort that Marx described in THE EIGHTEENTH BRUMAIRE) will play out. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://myweb.lmu.edu/jdevine
Re: [PEN-L] capital lost clout?
Carl Remick wrote: > >> > 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. A) Does the public as a whole see CEOs in that light? I haven't paid much attention to the matter, but my vague impression is that a large share of the public (i) disapproves heartily of high pay for CEOs but (ii) doesn't think anything can be done about it, and anyhow other issues are more important B) It's not a swindle -- it's merely one way of dividing up the surplus among those who extract it. A squabble between bond holders and shareholders doesn't concern us, and neither does a squabble between rentier capitalists and activist capitalists. Carrol > Carl
Re: [PEN-L] capital lost clout?
Carl Remick wrote: 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." First of all, CEO compensation is pretty small relative to overall returns on capital. But CEO compensation is a form of return on capital, so we're just talking about the division of the booty, not its redirection somewhere else. Doug
Re: [PEN-L] capital lost clout?
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
