Prometheus 6

I have previously written of the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation

[O]nly anti-civil rights organizations are named more cynically. It should be called the Committee on Capital Markets DeRegulation.

That post was titled Foxes applying for the position of hen house guard, making it the most appropriately named article I've written this year.

The Committee has issued its first report which is important because

The committee has no official standing, but the identities of its leaders and its formation with an endorsement from Mr. Paulson have created an expectation that it may map out the Bush administration’s final two years of strategy in capital markets. President Bush came to office talking of reduced regulation, but the Enron and WorldCom scandals led to passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which tightened regulation and established a new regulator for auditing firms, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board.

Corporate America's excesses derailed their plans. Now it's time to get those plans, developed in private at the height of the arrogance of their expectations, back into motion. And I say that because the report apparently has statements so bizarre I've actually stopped trying to craft a statement capable of truly indicating...well see for yourself.

“Strong shareholder rights go hand in hand with reduced regulation or litigation, as strong shareholder rights invite greater dependence on shareholders to discipline management and directors,” the report states...

The report also calls for relatively modest changes in the enforcement of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and supports greater shareholder democracy by limiting antitakeover defenses of companies.

God, I feel like washing my hands after typing that.

I haven't read the report...I need to track it down...bu if those "modest changes" actually are modest, they are only a first step. They announced one of their goals is to limit both civil and criminal liability for companies, auditors and directors.

Understand that a corporation is considered human for many purposes. I have many, many issues with that. For instance, consider: corporations have no bodies. They can break the law; so how do you punish them? Can't put them in jail. You can force its dissolution, but those who assembled and directed the corporation can just make another one.

Everyone knows corporate money funds all the lobbying efforts you recently learned to distrust (and even more recently learned to forget...). Because a corporation is 'human' it has the Constitutionally protected right of freedom of speech. Now I've always thought that, just as freedom of the press only applies if you own a press, freedom of speech ought only apply if you have a mouth. That's not how things work, unfortunately.

Under our current agreements, the new corporate person is instantly endowed with many of the rights and protections of personhood. It’s neither male nor female, doesn’t breathe or eat, can’t be enslaved, can’t give birth, can live forever, doesn’t fear prison, and can’t be executed if found guilty of misdoings. It can cut off parts of itself and turn them into new “persons,” and can change its identity in a day, and can have simultaneous residence in many different nations. It is not a human but a creation of humans. Nonetheless, the new corporation gets many of the Constitutional protections America’s founders gave humans in the Bill of Rights to protect them against governments or other potential oppressors:

• Free speech, including freedom to influence legislation
• Protection from searches, as if their belongings were intensely personal
• Fifth Amendment protections against double jeopardy and self-incrimination, even when a clear crime has been committed;
• The shield of the nation’s due process and anti-discrimination laws
• The benefit of the Constitutional Amendments that freed the slaves and gave them equal protection under the law.

Even more, although they now have many of the same “rights” as you and I - and a few more - they don’t have the same fragilities or responsibilities, either under the law or under the realities of biology.

This whole business of corporations as persons started so that they could be held responsible for contracts but has gotten WAY out of hand.

Wal-Mart's ambitious legal strategy strikes at the heart of what it means to file a class action. The company maintains that its constitutional rights would be violated if the court allows a suit to go forward involving up to 1.5 million of the retailing giant's current and former female employees. Because such a case would deprive the company of its rights to defend itself against each woman's claim, it argues, the courts should allow suits only on a store-by-store basis.

If the Ninth Circuit agrees and strikes down the multistate action certified by a lower court, it would likely kill the largest employment class action in U.S. history. More broadly, it would open wide the door for all large companies to make similar arguments. "A victory for Wal-Mart might mean that plaintiffs can't bring nationwide class actions anymore and that they might have to do them locally or regionally," says Mark S. Dichter, a management-side employment lawyer at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP.

It's gotten so out of hand that corporations actually have rights superior to yours. And the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation is looking to enhance and consolidate those rights.