Nemesis Project: corprate funding of political parties

Showing posts with label corprate funding of political parties. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Corporate power, corporate criminality and secret lobbying: Goldman Sachs

It has not been a good couple of weeks for Goldman Sachs.

A report by a bipartisan US Senate Committee into US investment banks has recommended criminal charges be bought against Goldman Sachs . Goldman Sachs and other Wall St firms were described by the Senate Report as a "financial snake pit rife with greed, conflicts of interest, and wrongdoing."

Goldman Sachs, the nation's fifth-largest bank by assets, systematically misled clients, sold them financial instruments it knew to be junk, bet against them and profited off of their losses, according to a Senate report released this week.

The report, the product of a two-year investigation, paints the firm as Exhibit A of Wall Street's evolution from a place that raises and deploys capital to worthy businesses into a vulturous creature that preys on unwitting investors.

Goldman's conduct in the two years leading up to the near-implosion of the financial system show a firm dedicated to "sticking it to their own clients," said Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who chairs the panel that produced the report. "Goldman gained at the expense of their clients, and used abusive practices to do it."

In the UK a report published by SpinWatch UK exposes Goldman Sachs political and financial lobbying muscle in the UK and Brussels (The European Parliament).

The report, entitled, Doing God’s Work: How Goldman Sachs Rigs the Game details Goldman Sachs’ secret lobbying activities in the UK and Brussels and links to politicians. It exposes:

The extensive links between Goldman Sachs and the Conservative Party;
Political donations totalling £8.5million to British politicians in the past decade from Goldman and ex-Goldman people;
Goldman Sachs’ immense lobbying machine in Brussels, including active membership of over a dozen financial sector lobby groups;
Extensive meetings between Goldman Sachs and Conservative MEPs including: 9 meetings in six months with a key MEP on the Parliament’s Economics and Monetary Committee; and a total of 36 meetings between just four Tory MEPs and Goldman Sachs, its lobby groups or PR companies acting on their behalf;
The bank’s lobbying campaign to undermine political reform on derivatives and alternative investment funds including: private dinners and unminuted "after office hours” meetings, high-level conferences and targeted campaigns to Commission officials, MEPs and their assistants;
How Goldman Sach’s lobbyists tried to undermine amendments in a key report on derivatives, seen as “financial weapons of mass destruction”;
The bank’s lobbying enabled them to gamble on food futures and drive up prices.

Report author, journalist Andy Rowell said: “A year ago, David Cameron said that lobbying was the next big scandal waiting to happen. This report shows that banks like Goldman Sachs – who are intricately connected to the Tories – continue to lobby to get what they want."

Rowell continued: "The entire regulatory process - and the lobbying activity that surrounds it - has to become significantly more transparent and accountable. If it is allowed to be captured by bankers, the next financial crisis will only be a matter of time.”

Friday, June 11, 2010

Corprate power and the "marriage" of money and politics

image courtesy of The West Australian

This picture is from the front page of Thursday's West Australian newspaper.

The photo shows the Deputy Leader of the Federal Liberal Party locked in an embrace with WA 's richest man, who is also one of the key spokespeople for the miner's campaign against the Federal Government's Super profits tax.

My colleague Gavin Mooney and I have a piece in the online publication Online Opinion under the title Power and Money to Thwart Democratic Process in which we raise concern about the power of corporate money and corporate self- interest to control the democratic process. Our concern is that the debate on the super profits tax reflects the disproportionate influence of wealth and corporate power over the political and democratic process.

In our piece we raise questions about the way that the mining companies and some of the richest people in Australia use their financial power against a democratically elected government in order to protect their private interests. And what of the role of large segments of the corporate media who have actively prosecuted the miners' case?

Currently there are few rules that limit the spending of rich and powerful individuals and corporations. We ask

Why have limits on government spending on selling public policy and not on corporations spending on opposing public policy?
Surely any curb on political advertising first and foremost should apply to corporations? And should there not be limits on corporate funding of political parties?

In the piece we also ask about the role of the Liberal National Party in prosecuting the miners’ case. How much money are they receiving from the mining industry and how much money is flowing into the party’s coffers from the industry?

Reflections

“A corporation, essentially, is a pile of money to which a number of persons have sold their moral allegiance.”
Wendell Berry

"Corporations are to democracy what a T-Rex is to your checkers game"
Rebecca Solnit

"Political systems merely reflect the society which gives rise to them. And we live in a society-and a world-where the power of corporations is much greater than that of "ordinary people". Corporate power can readily be seen in our homes, our workplaces, our public spaces and our national debates"
Josh Fear

"The deep irony is that it is the unfettered rise of corporate power that presents the biggest threat to free markets, and to the ability of free markets to promote individual freedom, equality before the law and equitable prosperity"
Stephanie Blankenburg and Dan Plesch

" Wealth privilege remains embedded in the ancient institution of the corporation. It is a privilege out of step with market ideals, which has led to wealth disparities that threaten our political ideals. We can never really have political democracy without economic democracy".
Marjorie Kelly The Divine Right of Capital

"Democracy is not an outgrowth of free markets. Democracy and capitalism are antagonistic entities... A functioning democracy must often defy the economic interests of elites on behalf of citizens.."
Chris Hedges

"The privatization of public services and functions manifests the steady evolution of corporate power into a political form, into an integral even dominant partner with the state"
Sheldon Wolin, Democracy Inc: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism

Limited liability is at the heart of this rise of corporate power: it constitutes a blanket exemption of a special-interest group from accountability for the actions of their companies. While the mantra of "no rights without responsibilities" is used to regulate the behaviour of poor people who benefit from social-security payments, "the unaccountable few" enjoy feudal privileges"
Stephanie Blankenburg and Dan Plesch

"The economic, political and cultural signs of corporate colonization are increasingly abundant and readily visible in the contours of daily life"
Carl Boggs, The End of Politics

"Adult working Americans are more likely to die young as a result of organized corporate crime than any other form of criminal activity"
Michael Woodiwiss, Gangster Capitalism

"Without doubt corporate power and wealth shape politics today more than ever- in corporation's very growing presence in the economy, their extensive lobbies and influence over legislative activity, their ownership and control of the mass media, their preponderant influence over election campaigns, their capacity to secure relief from regulatory controls, their massive public relations apparatus, their general subsidies to the two parties.."
Carl Boggs The End of Politics

Our Agenda

The Nemesis Project is a Western Australian based civil society project that aims to shed light on everyday examples of corporate power and bring corporations under civil society and citizen control. We aim to highlight the ways that people are affected on a daily basis by corporate power.

We comprise a network of people and groups concerned that corporations and business have become too powerful and dominant within our society. Corporations and business have extended their power and influence into many sectors and aspects of life that should be preserved for the public good.

Corporations now exercise control over most aspects of the economy and society and use their power and money to exert control over the democratic process. In many cases the power and wealth of corporations and business have outgrown the restraints of democracy.

Although there is considerable concern about these issues efforts to address the problems have been limited and when they exist, fragmented. Strategies are needed to explore and structurally challenge the power exercised by corporations and business. The Nemesis project aims to develop an agenda to address the underlying causes of problems generated by corporate power and domination.

This blog is the first step in developing a citizen's agenda to re balance the relationship between corporate power and the power of ordinary Australians.

The Nemesis Project is an initiative of the WA Social Justice Network.