Every day, I get a new email from some group about a new 55-page proposal to fix the economy, or I see some expert propose a sure-fired way to get us "back" to a go-go world of "positive growth". There’s value in a whole lot of some of those ideas. But, my can’t-lose strategy boils down to a very simple idea I learned from "The Untouchables".
No, because I know, if you are a flick buff, you’re going to the scene in which Malone (Sean Connery) tells Eliot Ness (Kevin Costner) how to get Capone:
Here’s how you get him. He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue! That’s the Chicago way, and that’s how you get Capone!
Nope. Though I can understand the anger that might bring out impulses of violence, I am a man of peace so a much better philosophy and strategy for our purposes comes towards the end of the film, during Capone’s trial on tax evasion. You may remember it: Ness, finding out that most of the jury has been bribed, makes the corrupt judge in the case believe that the judge’s name is listed in Capone’s payoff records. The next scene finds us back in the courtroom: [the rest after the fold]
Judge: Bailiff, I want you to go next door to Judge Hawton’s court, where they’ve just begun hearing a divorce action. I want you to bring that jury in here, and take this jury to his court. Bailiff, are those instructions clear?
Bailiff: [puzzled] Yes, sir, they’re… clear…
Capone: What’s he talking about? What is it?
Judge: Bailiff, I want you to switch the juries.
Bailiff: Yes sir.
Ness understands that, without a new, untainted jury, there is no chance to convict Capone–and achieve justice.
And that, my friends, is what we need in the economic world of today. We need to switch entirely the "juries"–to change the people making the decisions about our economic future, who decides what is right and what is wrong. Otherwise, the game is fixed.
It does us very little good if we present the case for a different strategy, in reams of studies and papers, if the refs/juries/decision makers are people who espouse the same theories and basic frame of thinking. Frankly, I’m sick and tired of reading yet another new paper by some organization justifying its existence to some funder that states the obvious–but won’t say what is much more clear: the game is fixed.
We can’t tinker around the edges and switch just a few members of "the jury", nor is it very effective to think about those switches in the context of an elections. We need a wholesale clearing out. After the corruption on Wall Street, when it was clear the game was fixed, we needed to demand–and, if we had to, mass in the streets–that every single top level management person at every bank and financial firm be replaced. Certainly, every institution that got a single dime of taxpayer money had to be forced to sack the entire executive team. Instead, nothing has changed: most of the same people are still in place, pocketing huge salaries and, I guarantee you this, they will be at the helm when the next financial implosion hits–and, once again, the people will be told to pay the price.
But, Wall Street is just one example. "The jury" making decisions in every corner of our economy is infected with a belief and an allegiance to the "free market"–an entirely mythical concoction that gives cover to a bankrupt system that is robbed the people of our collective wealth and siphoned that wealth into the hands of a few. That "jury" is inhabited by Republicans and Democrats, by "conservatives" and "liberals" who, while some may notice the stench around them and decry the worst aspects of the "free market", still regurgitate its basic rules–and you can see that rot in the leadership and behavior of the Robert Rubins of the world or the monumentally stupid debate about the phony debt and deficit "crisis".
We need a whole new set of economic leaders.
Now, I’ll answer quite clearly the obvious question "well, who would run the companies, the banks, and the rest of the economic world" with the same answer I gave in my book, "The Audacity of Greed: Free Market, Corporate Thieves and The Looting of America":
I am making the following offer to all corporate boards in the United States: I am available to run your company, no matter what industry you are in, despite the fact that, in most cases, I have zero knowledge about that industry, or even your particular company. As a result of my ignorance, it is more than likely that, under my leadership, your company’s stock price will fall, its profits will decline and it will lose market share. Therefore, the chances are good that within a year, two at the most, you will have to fire me.
I will do all this for $250,000 a year in salary, and the same healthcare and pension benefits that you give to your regular workers. In addition, when you fire me, I will leave with just three months’ severance pay, and no additional perks—no golf club memberships, no use of the company’s corporate jet. Though my tenure will wind up costing your company millions of dollars, in the end, you will still be getting a much better deal than many companies have gotten over the past decade.
There are hundreds, if not thousands, of people we could hire as leaders and managers of the economy who would do a much better job than the people running the show right now–if we chose people who were not simply out to fleece the country and rob the people. If you want to answer why people are so angry that some of them turn to the Tea Party or other destructive answers, answer the question: why do we keep turning to the same people like Robert Rubin who have engineered a calamity over the past several decades?
It’s pretty elementary. If an arsonist is loose, you take away the matches. And, then, you find a jury that puts the arsonist away, so the public is protected. And that is what needs to be done with the purveyors of the "free market":
GET RID OF THEM.
