CORPORATE GOVERNANCE UNDER SIEGE

Saturday, October 15, 2011 witnessed an unprecedented global outcry against the capitalism under practice in several democracies. The protesters launched world-wide street demonstrations against the corporate greed and biting cutbacks in a roaring action targeting 951 cities in 82 countries. The inspiration has come from America’s “Occupy Wall Street” and Spain’s “Indignants” and the people took to the streets of Sydney, Hong Kong and Tokyo as well.

It was the biggest show of power yet by a movement born on May 15 when a rally in Madrid’s central square of Puerta del Sol sparked a protest that spread internationally. The deprived world and their citizens living on the edge of poverty and unemployment have no other option except to express their anger in the form of street demonstration and to make a hue and cry on their fate. It is a testing time for the well-to-do under the garb of Financial Wizards, Corporate CEOs, mighty Media Moguls, Tinsel-world Titans, Banking Czars, Under-world Mafias which enjoy enormous clout of money power and muzzle power and which would try to keep the under privileged, the lower middle classes and the deprived groups of human beings always under their control. The exploitation of the existing access to inherited wealth, accumulated assets and manipulated values of stocks and shares in the stock market has enabled such suckers of human capital and financial assets to survive successfully. The crony capitalism has been ruling all sorts of governments on this globe through their invisible control and guidance of the rulers, the so called protectors of citizenry within their boundaries. The suppressed anger is against the existing set up and systems of governance and free market economy exhibiting their ugly face in the form of unlimited inflation, uncontrollable unemployment and chronic inequalities in the distribution of wealth. There was a time when the defects of communism over-powered these predicaments and the merits of capitalism took an upper hand resulting in the disintegration of Soviet Russia and controlled liberalisation of Chinese economy. But unfortunately the man’s greediness has become so powerful and so overwhelming that its deficiencies and defects have assumed such alarming proportions that slogans like death to capitalism and freedom to people have sprung up in countries like Philippines, Canada(Montreal, Vancauver and Toronto) too. The democracies were under seige is evident from the following statements:

“Who do you think pays the taxes” said one long time money manager. “Financial services are one of the last things we do in this country and do it well. Let us embrace it. If you want to keep having jobs outsourced, keep attacking financial services.” He added that he was disappointed that members of Congress from New York, especially senator Charles E Schumer and senator Kirsten Gillibrand, had not come out swinging for an industry that donates heavily to their campaigns. “They need to understand who their constituency is” he said.

The time is running out for the well-to-do to realise the need for a limit to their hold on global wealth and incomes. Sooner the better.