It’s remarkable to see the level of obvious self-dealing at Mylan persist as long as it has. Be sure to read about how the former CEO was permitted to let his son use the company jet on behalf of his rock band.
Read more...Why the bogus idea that managers should focus on “maximizing shareholder value” is driving the American IT industry into the ditch.
Read more...In the last month or so, I’ve seen some remarkably dubious studies flogged around what Lambert calls the Innertubes, all ringing changes on the same themes: outsized pay for those at the top is a reflection of a state of nature. Fortunately, a new study from Lawrence Mishel and Alyssa Davis of the Economic Policy Institute has done the heavy lifting of shredding new, creative defenses of out-of-control CEO pay.
Read more...Why outsourcing winds up producing cost creep over time.
Read more...Some of the Valley’s billionaires are using their publicly-assisted wealth to back far-right politics under a “libertarian” label.
Read more...Bill Black shreds HSBC’s efforts to use the “I’m the CEO and I know nothing” defense for its helping clients cheat on taxes on a mass scale.
Read more...Jamie Dimon seems to think if he can tell his Big Lies long enough, he’ll be believed. In reality, the only ones who will buy his blather are his fellow members of the elite banker looting classes and their hired help.
Dimon’s latest opportunity to play Ministry of Truth came in an analysts’ call last week, when he tried presenting JP Morgan and banks generally as “under assault”. This was so patently ridiculous that it quickly elicited the scorn it deserved.
Read more...Executive rentiers and their media lackeys are invoking the canard that they can’t find decent investment opportunities. The truth is that they’ve exhausted the first and second lines of value extraction, that of labor-squeezing and disinvestment, and aren’t prepared to accept the lower but still attractive returns of taking real economy risks.
Read more...Individuals who work in the finance sector enjoy a significant wage advantage. This column considers three explanations: rent sharing, skill intensity, and task-biased technological change. The UK evidence suggests that rent sharing is the key. The rising premium could then be due to changes in regulation and the increasing complexity of financial products creating more asymmetric information.
Read more...The Washington Post has a story that blandly supports the continued strip mining of the American economy. Of course, in Versailles that the nation’s capitol has become, this lobbyist-and-big-ticket-political-donor supporting point of view no doubt seems entirely logical. The guts of the article: Three years ago, Harvard Business School asked thousands of its graduates, many […]
Read more...Libertarians are profoundly anti-democratic. The folks at Cato that I debate make no bones about their disdain for and fear of democracy. Friedrich von Hayek is so popular among libertarians because of his denial of the legitimacy of democratic government and his claims that it is inherently monstrous and murderous to its own citizens.
Read more...David Cay Johnston is a clear and lively conversationalist, and I anticipate readers will enjoy his discussion of his work over the last 20 years on inequality.
Read more...Why Rhode Island’s maximum wage proposal is a potential big step toward reducing income inequality.
Read more...One of my pet peeves is the degree to which the notion that corporations exist only to serve the interests of shareholders is accepted as dogma and recited uncritically by the business press
Read more...We’ve argued that the notion that companies are obligated to maximize shareholder value is a theory made up by economists and eagerly adopted by corporate executives, with little to no foundation in law. We received confirmation of our thesis in the form of a Columbia Law Review article by the chief justice in Delaware, Leo Strine, arguing that shareholder activism needs to be curbed. As if CEOs are really breaking a sweat over those pesky shareholders.
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