March 03, 2015

The problem is that regulators, behind our backs, empowered an AAArisktocracy to have special access to bank credit.

If we tax and redistribute all wealth, what shall we do the morning after the party? That question, which could be asked to Piketty, is similar in nature to the question we could make to John Plender, “The corporate aristocracy holding out against fiscal revolution” March 3.

Mr. Plender After getting rid of all that corporate cash by paying dividends, by paying taxes or by building private bridges to nowhere, then what?

Also, all that cash is not just forgotten cash lying under a mattress. Plender himself even mentions that “the corporate sector… in several big economies… now acts as a net lender to governments” which means, that the government already uses those funds, perhaps even paying negative interest rates on these.

Current regulations do not allow bank credit to flow in a fair way to those “smaller companies, which innovate and create jobs”, only because they are perceived as “risky”. That is why the liquidity coming from QEs is trapped, and blows bubbles around already existing assets. But Plender, like many others, just does not want to see this…I wonder why?

What “corporate aristocracy”, what we have is an AAArisktocracy that has been appointed by regulators as those who really merit bank credit.

PS. I have for many years argued that when corporations pay taxes, they dilute the citizens’ tax representation. And that is why when Plender writes that in the US corporate taxes were down to 1.6 percent by 2013, my first impulse would be, bring it down to zero now and save yourselves a lot of expensive economic and political distortions.

PS. Also, as a shareholder, in these times of possible extreme volatility, I do not like to hold shares in any company that has not hoarded ample reserves of cash… to fend off threats or to capitalize on opportunities