Is the US a capitalist country?
Is the US a capitalist country? The question is not frivolous. Just consider how many features of America’s post-election economic landscape look curiously like Old Europe and tarnished Japan.
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First, consider Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government sponsored agencies recently enmeshed in accounting scandals. Because they have come to be regarded as “too big to fail”, Fannie and Freddie enjoy lower borrowing costs than the competition - a distortion similar to that enjoyed by state-owned German banks or the Japanese postal savings system. Except that the German financial playing field is being forcibly levelled by the European Union while in Japan, the government of Junichiro Koizumi is dedicated to privatising postal savings.
No political impetus exists in the US for anything comparable. It is widely assumed the latest scandal at Fannie will produce no more than legislative tinkering and regulatory fudge.
Now look at General Motors. Its recent third quarter figures showed that this corporate colossus made no money from motors and was in profit thanks only to its financial subsidiary, GMAC. Within GMAC, mortgage lending was the biggest earner. In effect, GM has been doing a similar job to Fannie and Freddie in encouraging car buyers and home owners to borrow and spend, thereby keeping the US economy afloat after the stock market bubble.
GM’s equity is a slender $28bn wedge that supports hundreds of billions of dollars in debt, healthcare liabilities and pension obligations. It is more of a social insurance system for employees and retirees than an exemplar of shareholder capitalism. In short, GM looks increasingly like a Japanese stakeholder company, as does Ford Motor. Oddly enough, their chief Japanese competitor, Toyota, still manages to make big profits from motor manufacturing.
Nor should we forget that one reason Fannie, Freddie, GM and Ford operate like this is down to another non-market feature of the system. The Federal Reserve is one of the world’s busiest price fixers and has fixed interest rates at an unprecedentedly low rate in the post-bubble period, with the result that the US system is awash with credit while household debt is at sky-high levels. There are uncomfortable similarities with Japan in the 1980s, even if the Japanese were more thrifty.
Here is another thing the Japanese would recognise: the something-for-everyone US corporate tax bill, passed last month. This cornucopia, intended to support manufacturing, included such spectacular pandering to special interests as a $9m tax reduction on bows and arrows and an $11m cut in excise taxes on fishing tackle boxes. Manufacturing was defined to include oil refiners, architects and civil engineers. Seriously. In Tokyo they call it money politics (though the US version is admittedly more transparent.) We will pass by, more in sorrow than in anger, the Bush administration’s policy of dispensing non-competitive contracts in Iraq to Halliburton and others, while noting the similarities with the informal Japanese system of sharing out construction contracts on an uncompetitive basis.
Enough of the Japanese. Consider now the biggest curiosity of US corporate governance - namely that shareholders’ votes on directors’ appointments at annual meetings have no force. Shareholders can “withhold” their votes, but even if more than 50 per cent do so the gesture is purely symbolic and the company can continue on management’s chosen path. This shareholder democracy is about as democratic as Cuba or the old Soviet Union. A proposal by the Securities and Exchange Commission to give shareholders a slightly greater say in board appointments has run into a barrage of criticism from managers. William Donaldson, SEC chairman, has cooled on the idea. In extreme frustration, Harvey Goldschmid, the Democratic SEC commissioner, declared in a recent speech that “the Commission’s inaction to this point has made it a safer world for a small minority of lazy, inefficient, grossly overpaid and wrongheaded CEOs”. Too right.
Staggered boards and poison pills are an endemic feature of US corporate life. Even the investment banks, which profit from an active market in corporate control, can be heavily protected from hostile takeover. Goldman Sachs, a fervent advocate of a fully liberalised takeover regime for Europe, was floated at the turn of the millennium with non-voting shares; blank cheque preferred stock, which dilutes outside shareholders’ voting rights and can shrink their share of earnings and assets at the management’s whim; and a supermajority provision that requires an 80 per cent vote to oust a director.
This is the continental European “insider” model of governance. It has now been embraced by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, complete with poison pills, after its move to Delaware from the cleaner governance environment of Australia. Stakebuilding by Liberty Media was the spur.
The conclusion? The US may be a capitalist economy. But in matters corporate it often lags behind Old Europe and Japan Inc. Perhaps the stellar compensation of US chief executives should be reduced towards German or Japanese levels. But the free market plays little part in boardroom pay decisions. Yet another non-capitalist fix.
The writer is an FT columnist and author of Going off the Rails: Global Capital and the Crisis of Legitimacy (John Wiley)
美国是个资本主义国家吗？
美国是个资本主义国家吗？这可不是个琐碎的问题。只要想想看，在美国大选之后的经济面貌中，有多少特征看上去与 “老欧洲”和风光不如当日的日本惊人地相似。
首先来看“联邦国民抵押贷款协会”(Fannie Mae, 房利美)和“联邦住宅抵押贷款公司”(Freddie Mac, 房地美)，这两家政府资助的机构最近陷入会计丑闻。由于市场开始认为，房利美和房地美“太大而倒不了”，所以它们比竞争对手享有更低的借款成本。这是一种不正常的现象，类似于德国的国有银行或日本邮政储蓄系统所享有的待遇。而不同之处在于，欧盟正强制德国金融领域成为公平竞争场所，而在日本，小泉纯一郎(Junichiro Koizumi)政府正致力于邮政储蓄部门的私有化。
美国不存在此等政治推动力。人们普遍认为，房利美最近的丑闻，最终只会带来立法上的小修小补和监管方逃避责任。
再来看通用汽车(GM)。最近公布的第三季度数据显示，这家巨头公司没有从汽车业务中赚到钱，只是依靠其金融子公司GMAC才实现盈利。在GMAC内部，抵押贷款是最大的赢利点。实际上，通用汽车做着与房利美和房地美类似的工作，即鼓励购车者和房主借款消费，由此令美国经济在股市泡沫破灭后继续运行。
通用汽车280亿美元的资产是一条细薄的楔子，支撑着公司数千亿美元的负债、保健欠款和养老金负担。它与其说是股份制资本主义的典范，还不如说是雇员和退休人员的社会保险体系。总之，通用汽车看上去越来越像一家由利益相关人组成的日本企业，就和福特汽车(Ford Motor)一样。说来也怪，它们的首要日本竞争对手丰田(Toyota)仍能从汽车制造中赚取丰厚的利润。
我们也不该忘记，房利美、房地美、通用汽车和福特之所以能采取这种经营方式，是因为美国制度中另一个非市场特征。美联储是全球最繁忙的价格制定者之一，而且在泡沫后时期，已将利率固定在史无前例的低水平，导致美国金融体系中信贷泛滥，家庭债务处于极高水平。这些都与上世纪80年代的日本有着令人不安的相似之处，即便当时的日本人比现在的美国人节俭。
日本人将看到另一件事似曾相识：美国上周通过了针对所有公司的税收法案。这一旨在支持制造业的庞大减税计划，包括了如此引人注目的迎合特殊利益群体的举措，如削减900万美元弓箭税，以及削减1100万美元渔具税。制造业的定义范围纳入炼油商、建筑师和土木工程商。说真的，在日本，他们称之金钱政治(当然，美国这个版本无疑更加透明)。对于布什政府把在伊拉克的非竞争性合同分配给哈利伯顿(Halliburton)及其它公司的政策，我们将听之任之，与其说是因为愤怒，还不如说是因为悲伤，与此同时，我们注意到，这与日本在非竞争基础上分配建筑合同的非正规体制是多么相似。
日本人的事说够了。现在来看美国公司治理中的最奇怪之处，即股东在年度股东大会上对董事任命的投票并无效力。股东们可以“拒绝投票”，但即使50%以上股东这样做，这种姿态也完全是象征性的，公司可以继续走管理层选择的路线。这种股东民主与古巴或前苏联的民主差不多。美国证券交易委员会(SEC)曾经提议，要让股东在董事会任命中稍多一点发言权，但这招致了企业管理者们枪林弹雨般的批评。于是证交会主席威廉?唐纳森(William Donaldson)搁置了这个念头。极度沮丧的证交会民主党委员哈维?戈德施密特(Harvey Goldschmid)在最近一次讲话中宣布，“证交会迄今无所作为，为一小撮懒惰、效率低、报酬过高和固执的首席执行官们创造了一个更太平的天地”。太对了。
在美国公司生活中，董事轮换制和毒丸计划司空见惯。就连投资银行也会受到严密保护，让它们免遭恶意收购，尽管它们获益于一个活跃的公司控制权市场。高盛(Goldman Sachs)是欧洲完全放开收购体系的热烈提倡者。该公司于世纪之交上市，发行的是非投票权股份、空白支票优先股(blank cheque preferred stock)，并制定了一个超级大多数条款。空白支票优先股稀释了外部股东的投票权，而且管理层能随心所欲地缩小他们的收益和资产份额；而超级大多数条款则规定，要80%的投票才能罢免董事。
这是欧洲大陆式的“内部版”公司治理模式。鲁珀特?默多克(Rupert Murdoch)的新闻集团(News Corp)从澳大利亚更干净的公司治理环境搬到美国特拉华州后，就采用了这一模式，还运用了毒丸计划。Liberty Media增加股权是刺激该公司这么做的因素。
结论呢？美国也许是个资本主义经济体，但在企业事务方面，它往往落后于老欧洲和日本企业界。也许应该把美国首席执行官们高得离谱的薪酬降至德国或日本同行的水平。但自由市场在董事会薪酬决策上影响甚微。这又是一个非资本主义式的受操纵局面。
