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.
____
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!
Consider the job surge this year, Scott needs to look elsewhere…………
I suppose Scott Brown and republicans believe that if only banks weren’t restricted from the fraudulent practices that helped cause the housing bubble and financial crisis we’d have another housing boom or something and it would fix the economy stat!
But besides banks what regulations are they talking about? Cant be all the new environmental regulations with benefit-cost ratios around exceeding 2-1 and sometimes around 22-1.
Scott brown and republicans live in a fantasy world. Where of course the economy is bad because of regulations. I wish they’d join us in reality but I guess ignorance is bliss.
If their lawyer fees and regulation costs are limiting profits to the point where corporations can’t hire people, they would not be having RECORD profits. Some people aren’t too bright.
I know Koch Industries is the big bad too democratics. But in this case I would look toward Bain industries as Scott’s mentor.
We need a poll.
Which is scarier, Brown’s comment or Henson’s thoughts?
I’m going back and forth myself.
I think Henson’s thoughts. Brown is just toting the line here. I don’t believe he has any substance behind anything he says other than it is self serving.
That Hanson believes she is not of the “little guy” is the conundrum for society. Thus, Hanson can not see that Scott’ is a nothing.
Most companies are not seeing their profits limited by legal fees and regulations
gentlemen, I am very happy we traded up with warren; thou we do have to give scott credit for ending our representatives from buy stock they were to vote on.
Carpetbagger Brown is a Koch candidate. If you come up behind my car I have a power point note in my rear window: “Defeat Koch”.
I will raise the $ to print a large batch for 2016!
Ready for Hillary and Liz!
Hillary? Why Hillary, ILSM?
Me? I’m ready for ANOTHER Brown: Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown.
I’d kill to see Warren run, but I just don’t expect her to. And I care much, much, much more about actual policy–direct economic/fiscal/regulatory policy–than I do about gender. Sherrod Brown is Warren’s colleague on the Banking Committee, is identical to her on policy issues, and has been directly involved on those issues for a long time, dating back to his time in the House before he became a senator.
It’s just that he’s a man, so no one dares talk about him as a potential presidential candidate–which is ridiculous.
A 27 year old RETIREMENT investment specialist? A come on – your pulling my leg! She wasn’t even working when the great recession stuck. What we she understand about long term?
P.S. It seem odd that she doesn’t realise that Lawyers have jobs too.
oops
A 27 year old RETIREMENT investment specialist? A come on – you’RE pulling my leg! She wasn’t even working when the great recession stuck. What WOULD she understand about long term?
ilsm, if Hillary runs and is the confirmed as the democratic candidate; it will be a clean sweep for the right. Think white water, options in cattle, war mongering, and these are the lessor negatives.
Beene, Hillary Clinton is not of the right. And Whitewater, options in cattle, etc., while the right would rehash them, are not anything that would concern most people now. But there are, in my opinion, serious issues concerning her own and her family members’ incomes and lifestyle in the last several years, including her daughter’s bizarre $600,000/yr. employment contract with NBC News, negotiated by $zillion/per-hr. lawyers, for her to do almost nothing.
But most important, she—unlike her husband, who speaks at length about the details of economic, fiscal and regulatory policy, and unlike Warren and Sherrod Brown–doesn’t seem much interested in, or very knowledgeable about, these things. Clinton reminds me of Obama in that she relies mostly on clichés and sound bites when speaking to the public, mainly because she herself just doesn’t DO specifics. (Warren’s clichés and sound bites are actually inherently specific; they’re clearly founded on the specific facts she knows in depth.)
I read yesterday that Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, who’s considering running against Clinton for the nomination, is known as a competent wonk who spouts statistics. Well, bring on the wonk who spouts statistics, assuming that he actually explains their significance to the broader matters.
Hillary Clinton’s passion throughout her adult life is women’s issues, circa the 1970s-1990s, especially issues that matter most to highly educated fast-track-career women of her era. Such as glass-ceiling issues. She’s now broadened her public concerns to things that matter a lot to working women who are not fast-track careerists. That’s nice. But if it doesn’t have some tie-in with “women’s issues,” she doesn’t seem interested. For example, if it weren’t that about two-thirds of minimum-wage earners, and people earning less than the $10.10/hr. that Dems want to raise the federal minimum wage to—and that the issue has hit the bigtime in the public’s consciousness—it’s likely that she wouldn’t be focusing on it now.
Deep down, Clinton thinks it’s still the 1990s. But since it’s not, I don’t know why the Democrats would want her as their 2016 presidential candidate.
@Beene
No one will really care about those
Advantage with Hillary is she’s a very well known commodity, all the skeletons are already known.
2016 will come down to three factors.
*How well the economy is doing in people’s eyes
*Whether Americans feel relatively safe and secure
*Turnout among minorities, women and the young
Reason, I don’t think you have to be “well on in age” to be a competent retirement investment specialist. But you do have to know about corporate profit specifics and trends—to know WHY corporations in the modern economy do or do not spend some of their profits on increased hiring and other investment. This particular woman apparently does not.
She also apparently thinks that government policies that help Main St. Mom-and-Pops are limited to helping only Mom-and-Pops, rather than also, say franchisees, small manufacturing businesses, and others that aren’t among the Fortune 500. She’s an ignorant idiot. Or at least that’s how she came off in her comments.
Also, yes, lawyers have jobs too. So do lobbyists, hedge fund traders and coal miners. But in each instance, that fact is not enough, in my opinion, to direct public policy to serve their narrow interests in employment. Coal miners deserve the upmost respect and concern, but even so, climate-change issues have to trump coalmining industry interests, in my opinion. And regulatory lawyers can always switch practice areas. Rightwing constitutional and statutory law is a growing practice specialty these days.
Beene, The only folk I hear talking “boots on the ground” for perpetual war profiteering after the caliphate are teathuglican Koch boys!
Remember when the bookkeeping on Sarbanes-Oxley was costing $26 billion dollars a year. I think the entire accounting business was a few hundred million at the time. I have no idea where the other $25+ billion was going.
Beverly, thanks for the heads up on Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley. Read a couple of articles seems like a good manager. Still immigration is an issue, as we have enough poor people and without change in free trade policies that will increase.
We are in agreement on Warren and Brown.
As to money in politics, seem to be the norm that few have the moral character to resist in office or using as a stepping stone to more on the way out.
ilsm, no boots on the ground is the only saving grace of Obama. But Hillary supported those other administration officials who thought that boot on ground would have prevented our return to ME.