http://www.lootingtheusa.com/?page_id=2


Lootingtheusa.com is a site devoted to outing those individuals, organizations or companies who take more than their fair share from society. It will attack looters who target investors, consumers, employees, taxpayers, the court system, health care or even sports and religious groups.
I’m an American who now lives in New York City after spending many years in Canada. As a business and political writer, I am shocked at the unimpeded looting of the ownership class in America by the managerial class through excessive compensation. This phenomena is uniquely American and has set a corruptive tone throughout society.


Salaries handed out to the top five executives in all the publicly-listed corporations in the United States are equivalent to 7.5% of the net profits of all the companies combined, according to a 2004 study by Harvard Law Professor Lucian Bebchuk. The top five pay between 1993 and 2002 was $250 billion or 7.5% of aggregate corporate earnings. The pay levels of this group between 1998 and 2002 was equivalent to 10% of aggregate earnings. This does not happen elsewhere and is unprecedented.


For instance, Jeroen van der Veer who runs Royal Dutch Shell PLC made 2.6 million Euros (roughly $3.4 million) last year compared with $25.8 million made by ExxonMobil’s Lee Raymond. Mr. Raymond also received the world’s most obscene retirement package of $400 million.
A 2005 study by Wharton asked 22,074 directors working at 3,114 companies about their business or social associations. Where associated, executives reaped an average of US$450,000 more per year from their boards. “Directors who serve on multiple boards may look like outsiders, but they are not really outsiders and may indulge in mutual back scratching,” said Scott Richardson, Wharton Accounting professor in a newspaper interview.


American capitalism is also bedeviled by lawyers who exploit the country’s capricious legal system by suing corporations when stocks fall in price. Such suits, waged in backward legal jurisdictions with unsophisticated jurors, often result in lucrative settlements for these corporate ambulance chasers and their clients.


How can such unjustifiable looting be allowed by shareholders or lawmakers?


The problem is shareholder democracy is an oxymoron. Corporate bylaws are rigged against shareholders. Small investors have no voice and no wallet large enough to take these issues to a court of law or proxy battle.


All-too-often big shareholders with muscle, such as mutual or pension funds, are co-opted because they earn fees from these corporations to manage money or 401Ks.


Wall Street has no soul and merely facilitates whatever CEOs wish by building in stock options for them in order to win underwritings involving sums that would transform an African economy.


Breathtaking greed has also corrupted politicians who suck in gigantic contributions from this powerful constituency who want to perpetuate and enhance this injustice through inaction or tax cuts.


The media is often co-opted as well. Pursuing a story of corporate malfeasance involving friends, relatives or associates of a newspaper or broadcast proprietor, for instance, is a career-limiting move. Same applies to covering politicians and their corporate liaisons. On top of such conflicts, the mainstream media’s business model is imploding, with the rise of the Internet, and budgets for investigative pieces into corporate misbehavior is shrinking daily. So are the news “holes” devoted to business matters.


Fortunately, information is often available from a variety of sources. These range from media outlets to the blogosphere, data bases, government sources, academia and websites to information held by employees, investors, watchdogs, activists, competitors, whistleblowers and just plain cranks.


Lootingtheusa.com will survey the sources and invite individuals to post or disclose information in the interests of saving free enterprise and the political process from deterioration into a plutocracy that only looks like a democracy.


Rules:

Any emails or correspondence sent to me can be used on this site or in my newspaper columns. I will also censor any unfounded allegations, threats, bad language, racist comments or remarks containing inaccuracies or unverifiable statements.

I also reserve the right to publish partial comments or censor some altogether if they contain obscenities, unfounded allegations, personal attacks, threats or litigious remarks.