Cannibal capitalism

An interesting pair of articles in the NYT today on the profitable looting of companies by private equity firms. I believe that someone has already coined the term "cannibal capitalism" to describe this phenomenon. Too bad about your jobs, little people. Bummer about that pension fund, huh?

http://www.nytimes.c...mons.html?_r=1&hp

http://www.nytimes.c...tn1J34z/x9KbbFl9A

Now of course such a development would bring in its train much collateral damage that would likely be inconvenient, to put it mildly, to many of us, but I can't help thinking that there might be some transient satisfaction to be had living in a world in which Charlie Eitel and the rest of his class were used to decorate our thoroughfares as ornaments dangling from light standards. Would the carrion birds decline to feed on the corpses out of professional courtesy, I wonder?

cordially,

That is an example of the of the overloaded debt of the last economic cycle, but it doesn't really rise to the level of cannibal capitalism. The only part that was real cannibal capitalism is when the holding company made the manufacturing company take out a loan to pay the holding company more. Cannibal capitalism is when you buy a company with the intent of running it into the ground while extracting every penny you can from the corpse. Simple mismanagement and short sighted greed don't rise to that level.

I do think companies should be forced to put pension money and other employee funds in untouchable funds though, to protect employees during such shifts. Loosing your job is part of life, but the company shouldn't be able to take back the pension you have earned. In fact, they probably should be considered the top debt holder in bankruptcy, to prevent companies from pulling the common trick of running through bankruptcy just to extract the companies pension funds.

Jay

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