Scott Brown Solves the Mystery of What All Those Mega-Corporations Are Doing With Their Record Profits

They’re spending it on lawyers!

I’m not kidding.  Brown told a 27-year-old Fidelity Investments retirement specialist that big corporations can’t afford to hire people because they’re spending so much money on lawyers.  Which they have to do because of all those regulations.  Which is why he wants to “loosen regulations on big companies”: “So they could spend more money on hiring instead of on lawyers.”

And to think that I thought he wants to loosen regulations on big companies because the owners of one of the biggest companies of all—Koch Industries, which can afford to hire as many people as it wants, despite its big attorneys’ fees—wants loosened regulations and is spending huge sums of money to buy his election.  Silly me.

Obviously, I’m wrong about that, because the 27-year-old Fidelity Investments retirement specialist—her name is Erin Henson—accepted this and now plans to vote for Brown.

Although there also is another reason she’s decided to vote for him.  His opponent, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, has been highlighting her support for small businesses.  “Her ads show her walking around Main Street, America — that means nothing to me,” Henson told Associated Press reporter Holly Ramer, who’s in New Hampshire covering the race.  “I don’t think small businesses are going to be the wave of the future for people of my generation. I think she’s a little too focused on the little guy, and I’m not the little guy.”

No, she’s not the little guy. But her clients will be if they don’t change financial advisers, since their current one doesn’t keep up with corporate-profits news.  And if her supervisors at Fidelity read the AP article and realize that she’s clueless about current corporate profits and about what big corporations do with those profits, she might soon become a little guy herself.

Unless, of course, Paul Krugman’s been pulling my leg.

Shaheen should point this out.  If Brown isn’t aware that U.S. corporations are seeing record profits, and if he actually believes that the reason that companies aren’t hiring more than they are is that their regulatory lawyers’ fees are so high, he’s probably not someone most people would want in the U.S. Senate.  I mean, what if he becomes chairman of the Banking Committee or the Finance Committee?

Then again, Ms. Henson’s a Fidelity Investments retirement specialist, and she thinks Brown is onto something.  Although on second thought, I’m guessing that if Brown wins, Henson plans to recommend that her clients invest in those derivatives that bet against the stock market.

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ADDENDUM: Does anyone know how to reach someone high up in Shaheen’s campaign or in the DSCC?  I saw Ramer’s report on Yahoo News yesterday; it’s my opening page on Chrome.  But it certainly wasn’t a big political story–I just happened to catch it—and neither the Shaheen campaign nor the DSCC may be aware of Brown’s comments.  But this is exactly the kind of thing that the voting public should be told of, because it really does get into the essence of public policy.

So, please, if anyone knows how to reach someone high up at the Shaheen campaign or at the DSCC, and cares about the outcome of the Senate elections: Can you contact whoever and pass along the link to my post here?  Even reaching someone important in Harry Reid’s office might work.

Political pundits, our-side economists … anyone who can reach someone, directly, who matters ….

I mean it.

Thanks!