A problem with commerce

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and many of its allies such as the Wall Street Journal are currently complaining that the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Justice Department and New York AG Eliot Spitzer are being too aggressive in finding, indicting and prosecuting corporate crime.

The Chamber of Commerce simultaneously proves one of my points in Commerce that business is not moral, otherwise the Chamber would be seeking more aggressive prosecution. 

The problem is that the current type of prosecution benefits business in general while making life more difficult and sometimes more expensive for individual corporations.

Investors, a key source of capital, are the people who want open corporate books, reliable financial statements and financial transparency. This wave of prosecution benefits the investment community and commerce in general.

Because individual companies place their own self interest over the interests of the broader commercial community we get the unfortunate shortsighted behavior of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

We get the same type of behavior in local business clubs, Rotarys and local Chambers of Commerce that fail to pursue serious consumer complaints and often oppose new businesses that shake up the status quo. 

This needs to be fixed.

I suggest that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and similar entities create special executive committees with senior members appointed to long terms. Such a committee would be designed to represent the investment community and the long-term interests of commerce.  Call such an executive committee the Long-term Growth Committee.

In the long run the power and interests of market place commerce will trump the shortsighted interests of status quo-commercial clubs.  But the long run is often too long when local commerce has monopoly political power.