Barron’s headline (12/20/21) reads: “Goldman Sachs Cuts U.S. Growth Forecast After Manchin Rejects Build Back Better Plan”. I was taken aback, so I went to their website to find context. I read this: “we [Goldman Sachs] are integrating climate across our firm’s business and risk practices”.
It is difficult to get my arms around this cave in; after all, Goldman Sachs is a private company with a market cap of $124 billion, give or take. When did corporations become the handmaidens of The Swamp?
The idea for limited liability arose out of the need to minimize the risk of providing funds for ships plying their trade in The Levant. When industry had gotten to the point at which an aggregation of labor and capital was required to produce a good, the British came up with “joint-stock” companies—in essence, royal monopolies.
In April 1606, King James I chartered the Virginia Company of London with the express purpose of “colonizing the eastern coast of North America” (“Virginia Company”, Britannica).
The appellation “corporation” comes from the Latin corporationem, meaning “assumption of a body”. That is, government-chartered corporations in the United States are considered to be persons benefitting from all the rights and privileges guaranteed in the Constitution to all U.S. citizens. Indeed, the case, Dodge v. Ford Motor, confirmed that the sole duty of a corporation is to act for the benefit of shareholders (owners).
The current philosophy of Goldman Sachs seems to be to seek accommodation with the Sovereign. How did we get to this point?
I do not know where the need to be king comes from, but the manifestation of that need is obvious, every day. The problem facing Elitists is the Constitution itself, as the Constitution places the power to act with the people first, then the states and, lastly, with the federal government. We know this because the federal government came into being through specified actions of the states. (Why else would senators have originally been chosen by state legislatures? Why would there be an Electoral College? Why would the Founders include a Tenth Amendment?)
But, to Elitists, these are only speed bumps. Alexander Hamilton expended a great deal of energy lobbying for a Central Bank. He must have known, implicitly, that loyalty to the federal government would have to be bought.
It took more than a century for the Federal Reserve to become a reality and another half century for the Federal Reserve to be able to fund federal deficits. And here we are.
In a poll conducted in 2012, two-thirds of voters expressed concern that the Government and Big Business “worked together against the rest of us” (Rasmussen). And Alexander Hamilton—wherever he may be—is smiling.
I do not include Main Street in the Big Business coalition, as the Middle Class is the only group standing between us and Big Brother. Besides, the Middle Class has been greatly co-opted through Social Security, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, and Obamacare. But there can be no doubt that mega-corporations are no longer in the business of attending to their shareholders, rather their first priority is attending to “Corporate Social Responsibility” as envisioned by a whimsical sovereign.
The final step in bringing the Middle Class to heel? COVID-badges. The only explanation for the Sovereign’s obsession with COVID Cases, rather than COVID Mortality, is the discovery of “who is with us” and “who is against us”. And those who refuse to accept the “Mark of Assent” will be labeled “White Supremacists”.