Politics

Liz Warren’s ‘New Deal’ Is The ‘Accountability Capitalism Act’

REUTERS/Gary Cameron

David Krayden Ottawa Bureau Chief
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Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said Tuesday that Americans need another “new deal” and she has the answer with her “Accountablity Capitalism Act.”

“For the past 30 years, we have put the American stamp of approval on giant corporations, even as they have ignored the interests of all but a tiny slice of Americans,” Warren wrote in a Wall Street Journal column. “We should insist on a new deal.”

Warren plans to introduce her new deal, which could potentially put private enterprise in a legislative vice, on Wednesday.

Warren thinks private enterprise should have to prove its worth not just to shareholders but everybody in society, saying the supposed “shift” in emphasis from the public to shareholders “has had a tremendous effect on the economy. In the early 1980s, large American companies sent less than half their earnings to shareholders, spending the rest on their employees and other priorities.”

Warren says 93 percent of large corporation profits went to shareholders between 2007  and 2016, preventing these companies from offering better wages to workers.

So the senator wants to create a government watchdog to monitor the profits of companies making more than $1 billion a year. This federal government “charter” would be somehow empowered to force large corporations to “consider the interests of all major corporate stakeholders — not only shareholders — in company decisions. Shareholders could sue if they believed directors weren’t fulfilling those obligations.”

Warren also wants the employees to have their say in electing at least 40 percent of a company’s directors while a corporation could not use any funds for political purposes without the approval of a minimum of 75 percent of directors and shareholders.

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