Dr. Martin Hash Podcast

Capitalism's biggest exploit is to legally steal the savings of everyday people. Corporate raiders leverage the weaknesses of corporate governance to fleece the companies they infect. Their intention is to take out massive loans, draining a floundering company of all equity, then eventually bankrupting, leaving bond-holders and stockholders in the lurch. It's only possible because there are multiple opaque layers and not enough caution because all the intermediaries make money no matter what. The people hurt are the clueless investors who financed the junk bond loans through their funds, and the company's minority shareholders whose stocks become valueless.

Corporate Raiders have absolutely no value; they do not thin the herds of the weak as their supporters so often declare, but instead siphon off the remaining value of a failing business, that could instead be used to replenish underfunded worker's pensions, and if the company went broke naturally, the stockholders and bond holders would have at least got something back on their investment. The fact that corporate raiders can operate with impunity is indication that they spread their ill-gotten gains around to the people who should otherwise be prosecuting them. Consider that one of their ilk, Mitt Romney, of Bain Capital infamy, was governor of Massachusetts, ran for president, and is now a senator from Utah; a modern-day pirate supported by his Mormon voting block, suffering no consequences for his actions. No wonder Capitalism has a bad name.