October 19th, 2009
Success or failure equals government intervention
The economy is in complete disarray and recovery efforts cost taxpayers everywhere. It will be a small fortune (a few trillion dollars) in long-term debt that governments are now incurring. Government is not at fault right? They are not the cause of economic wealth or disaster - right? What role do they really play? Turns out the answer is plenty.
Daily, the press fires out news about bailouts everywhere in the auto sector and financial marketplace, institutions that caused their own undoing are putting us in asset devaluation and debt never seen before. If you’re a successful company, don’t worry, the government sector is going to still tear your company apart. Microsoft is being micro-managed by the EU ,and the U.S. government make current financial regulators look like amateurs. What industry or company is on a government hit list?
If you’re successful, then rest on your laurels, shrug your shoulders and begin to fall flat on your face, just blame everyone else for causing the problems when the company falls apart. As a bonus, don’t worry the government will come bail you out. If you’re the biggest and most successful and financially sound, the government still wants to get into your books and tell you what your business can do and hand over some of the business to your competitors.
Why didn’t the government do that with GM? Shouldn’t they simply have handed over some of the business to Toyota, Ford and others? In a sense with Chrysler, they did and packaged up a deal and prayed that FIAT didn’t blink before they signed on the dotted line.
I wonder if Cisco is going have to worry some day that it will have to hand some of its business over to Juniper, Ciena, Brocade or other network gear companies? What if AMD continues to lose money and Intel continues to gain market share? The EU is already forcing Microsoft to put browser choices right on the computer as part of a software load. Google is under fire in Germany with book scanning. At what point does the level of government intervention start and end? Right now, it seems no matter what a company does, it’s going to happen. A monopoly in any industry or market segment is not healthy nor is a complete industry collapse like the auto industry. I just wonder to if those making the decisions are making the right ones.
The level of intervention is rising. Yesterday, the Washington Post reported that the U.S. Congress tabled new financial legislation to regulate the derivatives market (long overdue in my opinion, after being advised numerous times to do so) and the clean up of the mess begins. Historically I would say governments around the world don’t have good track record at allowing successful companies to operate in the U.S. without inteference. It’s easy to blame government; just remember, we elected them.
| 10/19/09
