It’s evident today that corporations raise and spend huge amounts of money on the political campaigns of the presidents and congressmen. These corporations also spend huge amounts of money hiring former government officials to lobby congress to pass laws that mainly benefit their interest. If so, have we allowed other entities than people to monopolize government?
The founding fathers were very concerned about the use of political power to benefit special interest groups, what they called factions – small segments of society that had their own selfish concerns that didn’t relate to the benefit of others. So they wanted as much as possible to restrain the ability of the general government to engage in that kind of behavior.
The system of “interventionism” that we have today serves the interest of the lobbyists and they represent the international corporations, because they have influence. Some say that what we need is a lobbying reform to keep the lobbyists away from lobbying, but that is not the answer because lobbying is petitioning the government and we have the right to do that.
There are two answers to that. One, if we had the right people in Washington, the right members of the Congress, who would not yield to the temptation of being influence by money, but that doesn’t seem to happen. The real solution is getting the government out of the business of being able to pass out favors, so there is no incentive for the businessman to come and lobby the member of Congress.
Have we allowed corporate power to influence the creation of laws that fail to benefit the people? Lawyers will argue that indeed the corporations are people. They will argue that they’re even good corporate citizens. But is a corporation really a citizen or for that matter even a person? And what about a multinational corporation, is that even a citizen of any particular country?
Club Lunch: Economist Raymond Yeung on the Future of Fiat Currency and Geopolitics...
China and the US have established an ecosystem that facilitates what chief economist Raymond Yeung has called “facto1y-dollar recycling” for years. What he means by this is that when the global supply chains are disintegrating, financial decoupling is a natural consequence. While global markets are questioning the future of fiat currency, central banks are promoting their own versions of digital tokens. Yeung believes that the core issue here is actually with payment infrastn1cture and not necessarily about the US Dollar vs the Chinese Yuan. He finds that the implications for global investments are subtle, but significant. Join us at the FCC to hear Yeung’s take on the future of fiat currency and how it will affect geopolitical relations between the US and China, especially as November’s Presidential Election between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump approaches quickly. Q&A moderated by FCC Professional Committee Member Andrew Chan. …