I was reading this LA Times article, and something struck me: it seems to be saying that Wall Street thinks government stimulus is good. Yet Republicans, who are stereotyped as being in the pocket of said Wall Street, flatly oppose it, and actively prevent it from happening.
Am I misinterpreting the article? Or am I incorrect about something else? What, if anything, does this say about the relationship between conservative politics and business interests?
The GOP hates stimulus simply because it supports their framing of Democrats as profligate spenders, and that ain’t gonna change in an election year. Nevermind that they all happily take the money and tout it to their constituents. The opportunity to grandstand makes up for that hypocrisy.
You can bet if they have the chance, the GOP will quickly reward the “job creators” on Wall Street once they get rid of the WH’s current socialist occupant.
The Republicans serve the stated interests of the specific businesses that own them, not business in general.
The stimulus in the article is monetary stimulus which Republicans have no control over. Most Republicans are against monetary stimulus but since they are only in charge of the house and the Fed is nominally independent and all of its members are appointed by the President.
The Fed wants to be seen as above politics so any attempt for the GOP to influence the Fed would likely be counterproductive.
What I don’t understand is why business didn’t support single-payer UHC. Large corporations, the ones with the clout, pay an enormous amount to cover their portion of health insurance. Way more than businesses do in other countries. They also are forced to make sub-optimal choices like hiring more part-time workers to avoid the cost of benefits. GM and other manufacturers would be more competitive if healthcare costs were on par with the rest of the world.
I think Germany is the country with the second highest healthcare costs, and it is 40% less than the US pays.
Because if it is difficult for a large businesss to cover those costs, it is much, much, much more difficicult for a small busininess to do the same. It eliminates competition. High health care costs/insurance costs benefits bigger players and eliminates competition.
Shhh! thinking like that might eliminate one of Canada’s competitive advantages in attracting US businesses to come north.
The premise is flawed. Wall Street is not overwhelmingly supportive of Republicans over Democrats as seems to be commonly believed. The most well-known Wall Street banker in today’s world is a well-known Democrat: Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase. It’s well publicized that Democrats outdrew Republicans in donations from Wall Street in 2008 and that many of Obama’s largest donors were banks and their employees in 2008. While there was a shift toward Republicans in 2010 and likely Republicans will outdraw Democrats for the 2012 elections, there will be significant donations to members of both parties from the major banks and their employees.
Of course a reduction in government spending will result in a decline in GDP, which will negatively impact financial markets in the short run. However, just as obvious is that we shouldn’t spend just to temporarily increase GDP. There are diminishing returns of more and more stimulus, much of it is wasteful spending, and it is debatable that it generates even a 1 to 1 return on the money spent. If government spending was so great and we get such a great return on our “investment”, why not increase the stimulus to ludicrous levels? If an additional $1-2 trillion stimulus is great, why not $10 trillion? Why not $50 trillion?
It is safe to say that what businesses want the most is stability and predictability. Whether or not you consider it the fault of Republicans or Democrats, the government has been a complete clusterfuck the past few years. Things like the debt ceiling crisis, government shut-downs, what to do about expiring tax cuts, what taxes to raise, huge legislative programs like healthcare insurance reform and attempted cap-and-trade, poor regulatory reform like Dodd Frank have immensely hurt the economy. Bowles Simpson recommendations should have been enacted.
Personally I think that whoever controls the Senate is usually not too bad (they at least act like grown ups most of the time and aren’t complete buffoons), the House is always run by a ridiculous group of idiots, and while Obama has been better than Bush, he has still been an immense failure. Also, most of the improvement that Obama has been over Bush has been in foreign policy (while not great, almost indisputably better than Bush) and in social policy (for those that are like minded). He has probably been worse in domestic policy, and I considered Bush a total failure.
Does anyone really blame Wall Street for not being as enamored with Obama as last time around? From a domestic policy standpoint, Romney seems like he would be a step up from McCain, and Obama now runs on a record of failure as opposed to a blank slate. The back-up quarterback is often the most popular guy on the team. We know our starter (Obama) isn’t that great so a lot of people think we should try out the back-up (Romney).
Of COURSE there’s a disconnect, and I’m astonished so few leftists see it.
It’s been a long time since big business reflexively sided with the Republicans. Indeed, except for the tobacco industry, most big corporporations either split their donations roughly evenly between the two major parties or just flat-out prefer the Democrats.
Both parties offer different things that big business finds appealing. If you’re General Electric, you want BOTH the low taxes championed by the Republicans AND the massive “green” energy subsidies promised by the Democrats.
And on the social issues, big business tends to be very liberal. Planned Parenthood is one of the Fortune 500’s favorite charities, you know.
Republicans only hate a Democrat’s stimulus. If Romney was president, he could turn around and supply billions in economic stimulus, and Repubilcans would break out in spontaneous applause. They are completely shameless, and suffer no cognitive dissonance when their own actions contradict their criticism of Democrats. Shameless.
Do they? Or do they just want to take credit for it themselves? When it was Bush’s stimulus, it was important. “Who else is going to do it?” they asked—“we have to pay these bonuses. Just have to, you see.” Many here argued quite forcefully for this.
Republicans playing chicken with the debt ceiling is another thing that business interests do not like. But that didn’t stop them before, and won’t stop them in the future either.
Republicans genuinely hate regulation.
But note that the most corrupt corporations also hate regulation and support the GOP.
Notable on this list:
Enron
Exxon
BP
Worldcom
Countrywide and other sham mortgage companies.
Halliburton
Most E&P companies for O&G
Agri-business and factory farming
Animal and food processing
Chemical
Weapons
Coal mining
But venture into technology, medicine, biotech, professions and it turns sharply liberal.
In fact, many of the businesses you cite LOVE regulation. It just has to be the right kind. The right regulations serve as a barrier to entry for new competition.