Crony Capitalism: Unhealthy Relations Between Business and Government a White Paper by the Committee for Economic Development of the Conference Board October 2015
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Crony Capitalism: Unhealthy Relations Between Business and Government A White Paper by the Committee for Economic Development of The Conference Board October 2015 Crony Capitalism: Unhealthy Relations Between Business and Government Table of Contents Sustainable Capitalism Subcommittee 2 Executive Summary 4 Introduction 8 Business-Government Relationships — Good and Bad 9 The Causes And Tools Of Crony Capitalism 20 The Economic Cost of Crony Capitalism 29 Policy Options for Combating Crony Capitalism 31 Notes 38 CED Members 41 1 Crony Capitalism: Unhealthy Relations Between Business and Government Sustainable Capitalism Subcommittee Co-Chairs Bruce Batkin William H. Donaldson Raymond V. Gilmartin Chief Executive Officer Chairman W. Bowman Cutter Chairman, President & Senior Fellow and Terra Capital Partners Donaldson Enterprises CEO (Ret.) Director, Economic Merck & Co., Inc Policy Initiative Lydia I. Beebe Robert H. Dugger The Roosevelt Institute Corporate Secretary Founder and Managing Timothy B. Goodell (Ret.) Partner General Counsel Larry D. Thompson Chevron Corporation Hanover Provident Hess Corporation EVP Government Capital LLC David L. Bere Affairs, General Counsel Bill Goodwyn Chairman and CEO Debra Fine & Corporate Secretary President & CEO Nonni’s Foods, LLC Chief Executive Officer (Ret.) Discovery Education PepsiCo, Inc. I Have A Dream Shideh Bina Foundation - Los Angeles Kathy Hopinkah Hannan Patrick W. Gross Partner National Managing Chairman Insigniam Howard Fluhr The Lovell Group Chairman Partner, Global Lead Angela Braly The Segal Group Partner Members President & Founder KPMG LLP The Braly Group, LLC Margaret Foran Michael G. Archbold Vice President, Chief Hollis W. Hart Chief Executive Officer GNC Holdings, Inc. Neri Bukspan Governance Officer and President, International Partner, Financial Secretary Franchise Management Paul Atkins* Accounting Advisory Prudential Financial Citi Chief Executive Officer Services Patomak Global Partners, EY Henrietta H. Fore Ben W. Heineman LLC Chairman Senior Fellow, Schools of Michael Chesser Holsman International Law & Government James Bacchus Chairman and CEO Harvard University Partner (Ret.) Barbara Hackman Great Plains Energy, Inc. Franklin Greenberg Traurig, LLP Jack A. Hockema President & CEO and Chairman, President & David Chun Former U.S. Secretary of Bernard C. Bailey CEO Chairman and CEO CEO and Founder Commerce Kaiser Aluminum Authentix Equilar, Inc. Barbara Franklin Enterprises Chris Bart Kenneth W. Dam Lisa A. Hook Founder and Lead Max Pam Professor Thomas P. Gerrity President and CEO Faculty, The Directors Emeritus of American Joseph J. Aresty Professor Neustar College; & Foreign Law & Senior of Management CEO, Corporate Missions Lecturer The Wharton School Lloyd W. Howell Inc., The Directors University of Chicago of the University of Executive Vice President College Law School Pennsylvania Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. 2 *opposed Larry Jensen Martha McGarry Catherine Reynolds Jeffrey Sonnenfeld President & CEO Partner President & CEO Senior Associate Cushman & Wakefield/ Skadden Arps Catherine B. Reynolds Dean, Yale School of Commercial Advisors Foundation Management Patricia A. McKay Yale University D. Bryan Jordan Partner R. Timothy Rice Chairman, President and Templeton & Co. Chief Executive Officer Robert J. Stanzione CEO (Ret.) Chairman, President and First Horizon National Linda E. McMahon Cone Health Chief Executive Officer Corp. Co-founder and former ARRIS Group, Inc. Alice M. Rivlin CEO Senior Fellow, Economic Andrea Jung WWE Paula Stern President and CEO Studies The Brookings Institution Chairwoman Grameen America, Inc. Lenny Mendonca The Stern Group Director Emeritus Theo Killion Nathan O. Rosenberg McKinsey & Company Founding Partner - Frederick W. Telling Vice Chairman Vice President, Herbert Mines Associates California Brian A. Murdock Insigniam Corporate Policy & Chief Executive Officer Strategic Management Ronald J. Klein Strategic Investment Landon H. Rowland (Ret.) Partner Group Chairman of Lead Bank Pfizer Inc. Holland & Knight LLP Ever Glades Financial John F. Olson Davia B. Temin Robert J. Kueppers Partner Patricia F. Russo President and Chief Senior Partner - Global Chief Executive Officer Regulatory & Public Gibson Dunn & Crutcher Executive Officer (Ret.) Temin and Company Policy (Ret.) Alcatel-Lucent Deloitte Jane Palmieri Business President, Dow Technologies, Inc. Scott Wieler Building & Construction Chairman David H. Langstaff Mary Schapiro The Dow Chemical Signal Hill President Advisory Board Vice Chair Company Argotyche, Inc. Promontory Financial John C. Wilcox Group, LLC Mark Leiter Donald K. Peterson Chairman Chief Strategy Officer Chairman and Chief Elliot S. Schreiber Sodali Ltd. Nielsen Executive Officer (Ret.) Chairman Avaya Schreiber Paris, LLC Keith Williams Daniel J. McCarthy President and Chief President and Chief Todd E. Petzel Larraine Segil Executive Officer Executive Officer Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Underwriters Frontier Chief Investment Officer The Little Farm Laboratories Inc. Communications Offit Capital Advisors LLC Company 3 Crony Capitalism: Unhealthy Relations Between Business and Government Executive Summary Sustainable Capitalism: its best uses, at low transactions cost). If it does, Why This Policy Statement? the system will... • Facilitate the formation of new and innovative Capitalism is the economic system, if you will, businesses, and that underlies all of the economic decisions — • Cause productivity growth, output growth and big, small, profound, mundane — that we make high employment, and therefore widely shared every day. prosperity (which is CED’s stated goal). But the nature of our economic system is not a By these standards, capitalism has performed question that people necessarily ask every day. spectacularly throughout history. It has supported the Societies do not need a profound philosophy to development of the greatest economy that the world produce and exchange; the motivation comes from has known. It has also allowed for the reduction of instinct. Adam Smith did not in the 18th century poverty at home and abroad on an epic scale. establish the economic system of his time — capitalism; he observed, described, and analyzed However, in the most recent decade, the U.S. what he saw already going on around him. economy has suffered; and some would blame capitalism itself. Pre-Adam Smith, there was less philosophical • Some would argue that capitalism has imposed a or analytical underpinning to thought about substantial cyclical and perhaps even structural economic systems. More of the variation in systems shock on the economy, although of course came from alternative approaches to ownership. capitalism’s responsibility (as opposed to other For example, a sovereign might own everything forces, such as government policy) is in dispute. and make the decisions of who gets what, and what • It arguably has imposed excessive costs of they do with it. Alternatively, property (including allocating capital (although many dispute that the individual citizen’s own labor) could be owned argument). privately, and all owners could make independent • It arguably has less accurately allocated capital, decisions — the system that Adam Smith observed judging from very low new business formation and analyzed. Post-Adam Smith, variations were (again debated). more self-conscious. Socialism and communism • Since the financial crisis, the economy has were created, advocated, and put into practice. One generated less employment (though again might say that they have evolved into “state-owned causation is subject to intense debate), and capitalism,” as it is being practiced today in the therefore has shared income growth more formerly communist China and Russia. narrowly than we would want. But capitalism is our economic system — basically The remarkable success of capitalism in the United what Adam Smith observed — based on private States has been made possible by widespread property, independent choices of work and public support for that system. Sadly, in recent investment, and free exchange. years, and especially since the September 2008 financial crisis, that support has seriously eroded. The Committee for Economic Development of Increasingly the public is coming to view the The Conference Board (CED) judges capitalism system as unfairly benefitting the few and as according to three basic criteria — the functions favoring Wall Street over Main Street. Moreover, we expect an economic system to perform: the system is no longer perceived to be producing • Allocate capital, accurately and efficiently (i.e. to the same impressive economic results as before. 4 This apparent recent erosion of consensus about community, or of capitalism itself; and that is the merits of the U.S. economic system, however by no means our intent. We emphasize that U.S. well- or ill-founded over the long term, at least business, operating under capitalism, has over the reduces the comity of our dialog over public issues, long term produced tremendous improvements in threatens our policymakers’ ability to mobilize income and living standards for the population at consensus in any future emergency, and diverts our large; and that capitalism must, for that reason, be energy from vital public concerns. made sustainable. But we recognize that a small minority in the business community did cause Looking forward, we want to reestablish and fulfill enormous harm in the course of the financial the fundamental objectives of an economic