A capitalist economy or a market economy?

Dear Colleagues

The world economy is moving because there is some technological progress and there is some investment in using the higher productivity materials, equipment and processes. But the good decisions being made to move the economy forward are small compared to the bad decisions that are being made and holding the global economy back ... and for the USA, making its socio-economic future very bleak indeed.

The metrics of the profit based capitalist economy almost guarantee that bad decisions for society are going to be made unless, just by accident, better socio-economic outcomes coincide with better corporate profit outcomes, and this happens but rarely. Decision making that impacts corporate profit are generally made by an economic elite that has moved a long way above the small business "making the payroll" level and the factory floor or the mines where wealth creation starts.

I have thought of bankers as being the "dumbest" part of the professional world for several decades ... but I never expected them to be so dumb and not able to "get it" as we have observed in the last couple of years. God help us if we continue to let important economic decisions be made by this crowd of very educated but very dumb ... that is narrow minded and inexperienced ... folk.

The so called capital markets are not markets any more than a casino in Macau or Las Vegas is a market. They are gambling joints ... and like the gambling world, those that own the gambling platform make the money. Tough for "we the people"!

Most of the "markets" in the world are now severely distorted ... by subsidies or trade rules and regulations ... or merely by the old fashioned rules of monopoly ... or if not that, oligopoly. Again this is great for the market controllers and rough for the general populace.

Stepping back ... the outcome of leadership over the past 40 years or so has been gut the "balance sheet" of the national US economy and a big part of the US population ... to make a few corporate and financial oligarchs very rich ... and leave the planet with about four billion people still poor and hungry ... and the atmosphere and the oceans rapidly depleting and likely not to be able to support life as we know it as soon as 100 years from now.

This is serious stuff ... and the stockmarket investors seem to think that the global economy is "just fine"!

Ridiculous!

It is this basic premise that justifies the effort to put Community Analytics (CA) in place to that there can be another view of corporate performance that takes impact on the community into consideration. On that basis the profile of "best companies" will change a whole lot.

Sincerely

Peter Burgess