I guess one question here is why Ford, Chrysler and GM didn't re-invest profits into accumulating their industrial capital. One, if the goal was to reach a certain level of production to stay competitive in the world (what is the benchmark now, 2 million vehicles per year?), the most obvious solution was to acquire stakes in and control of other car companies and attempt integration of production. Two, this very easily moves over to finance and speculative finance because of the way such deals were run by investment banks able to put together the 'leverage' to finance the deals (while taking a huge cut for themselves). Three, what is most surprising though is how these companies all say at the same time that they are in effect 'bankrupt' and need federal loans to stay solvent. So did management as ownership strip out so much money from these companies to enrich themselves (so they could, for example, speculate on other things)? So much for the idea that management even tries to act in the best interest of the company.
A different area of inquiry and analysis is how so much of the political economies we produce in have become owned by 'holding companies', which ultimately are owned by private equity groups and things like hedge funds (who invest for 'institutional investors'), while these private equity groups and hedge funds are dominated by US and UK 'interests'. CJ _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
