Last week Canada’s former Prime Minister Stephen Harper was unabashedly tweeting his delight at being hired as a corporate consultant with Dentons who brands itself as “the world’s largest global elite law firm” devoted to helping corporate clients increase “value” [ie., profits and share prices]. Harper is not a lawyer, but the firm boasts that it has a stable of previous politicians and regulators on the payroll to advise and assist their corporate clients with regulatory and legal hurdles. Good gig for them no doubt. The fact that they and Harper are so proud to boast all of this, shows how out of touch and oblivious these people have become about the massive inequality and corrective upheaval currently swelling through the world.
I’m very pleased to announce that my firm, Harper & Associates, is launching a strategic affiliation with @Dentons. pic.twitter.com/tw9tOunKqV
— Stephen Harper (@stephenharper) September 12, 2016
Earth to politicians and corporations: it’s not just about how you and your friends and their profits are doing, you have to be concerned about the majority of the citizens. Failing to do this has been the downfall of every egregiously self-serving regime in human history. Agreements, laws and policies written by corporations for corporations have undermined political, social and environmental stability the world over. The necessary upheaval is now underway.
Nobel Laureate and Professor of Economics at Columbia University Joseph Stiglitz discusses inequality, unemployment in the U.S., central bank action and the outlook for the Trans-Pacific Partnership. He speaks to Bloomberg’s Angie Lau on “Trending Business” from the 23rd CLSA Investors’ Forum in Hong Kong. Here is a direct video link.
This chart of relative growth for different US income groups since 1979 offers some perspective on the mean reversion process now needed to restore some reasonable equilibrium once more. A similar disconnect has happened throughout the world.
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