Customer Reviews

Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction

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Every American needs to read this book. Especially the tea party types. The massive consolidation of corporate America has led to virtually all of our recent problems. Among them: rapid offshoring, loss of product safety, the squeezing of small business and the middle class, the corruption of government and especially congress, the too big to fail syndrome, the routine corporate corruption, etc. These problems will continue until we strongly reassert our anti-trust laws that Reagan decided to ignore and every president since has refused to enforce including Obama. If we don't fix this, plan on the US assuming third world status soon.

As Thomas Frank of the Wall Street Journal put it (3/3/10) . "Barry C. Lynn's recent book, "Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction," has about it the feel of a secret history. It arises directly from the old antitrust tradition, and it presents us with an amazing catalogue of present-day monopolies, oligopolies and economic combinations. Its subjects are, by definition, some of the largest and most powerful organizations in the world. And yet almost none of it was familiar to me....

Mr. Lynn tells us, for example, about the power of single companies or small groups of companies over such disparate fields as eyeglasses, certain categories of pet food, washer-dryer sales, auto parts, many aspects of food processing, surfboards, medical syringes--and that the same situation would almost certainly exist in the sacred beer market were it not for the peculiarities of local alcoholic-beverage regulations....

This is, we are often reminded, a populist age, with fresh flare-ups of fury every time Wall Street bonuses hit the headlines. And in Mr. Lynn's combination of outrage against "the rich" and reverence for the country's democratic tradition, he seems to capture the sensibility of the times perfectly. "Cornered" could well become a sort of manifesto for our time, a road map for a revival of the old antitrust sentiment."

This book is a must read. Run don't walk to your local bookstore.

Besides being a terrific read, Cornered is a profoundly important and powerfully disturbing book. In the area of pharmaceuticals, the industry I know best, intense competition still exists, and thus Pharma might not seem to fall into the category of a monopoly. Even so, this book captures much of what has gone wrong in that particular corner of American capitalism. I now understand better why the drug industry has become larger and larger with fewer and fewer companies, and that other industries also substitute marketing for real innovation. Most disturbing of all is the out-sized political power that huge profits and consolidation provide. The founders of this country were very clear about the need to balance the power of branches of government in order to curb the tendency toward authoritarianism and tyranny, but excessive corporate power can be just as dangerous. Cornered offers a strong argument against the prevailing and near-religious faith in the power of the so-called "free market" to make us all rich and cure all our social ills.

This is a must read. The two main points that impacted me are:

1. I was once a US Citizen, I'm now a US Consumer. Ronald Reagan took care of that and

2. The "Tea Party" movement is attacking the US Government when it should be attacking Corporate America. Currently, Corporate America is running the US Government as opposed to its citizens (consumers).

"Cornered" is written for the times we live in because Barry Lynn, although may not have intended it that way, tells us why the world cannot come out of the current recession. It also leads to the pessimistic conclusion that this time we will be heading towards a permanent depression unless people realize the true predicament that we are in and organize massive demonstrations demanding the governments quit treating the majority of the people as suckers and take drastic actions before this crisis takes the world towards a human catastrophe as we have never seen in history.

There are two sides to the global economy. One side is the businesses and the other side is the consumer. Lynn addresses the problems with the business side illustrating how the trend for regulation-free economies has hoodwinked us to accept a few large corporations controlling the whole economy curtailing any competition (with the greatest communicator of our time, President Reagan, taking the side of anti-regulation group along with his Supreme Court appointees from the heart of the corporate world--such as Clarence Thomas representing Monsanto--what chance did the uninformed common people have?). He shows us how two or three major corporations own and dominate almost every industry. This finding is so bleak since it leads to the conclusion that there is no longer free competition and thus capitalism is no longer possible. And without capitalism and competition we cannot create enough jobs for the population.

Another disturbing fact is that these large corporations are owned by a small percentage of people who also own most of the wealth in the world today. Especially in the USA where the Congress has abandoned any rational fiscal policies depending solely on the monetary policies of the Federal Reserve to get us out of the recession, the situation is even more dangerous since the money that the Federal Reserve creates ends up only in the hands of the top five percent as easy money with that newly created wealth trickling down only as loans from them to the other 95% of the population expanding income inequality further.

The other side of the coin, the consumer, is equally important to capitalism. Think of it this way: if most of the wealth in the world is owned by a few people, then who is there to buy the goods being manufactured by the businesses except the basic needs to survive? Also, if it is the same five percent that controls the global governments then how can governments collect enough tax revenue to balance their budgets and meet the minimum expenses such as the cost of keeping the nations secure with modern infrastructure etc. when the majority cannot afford to pay taxes (without going into debt) and those who have the money to pay the taxes will not allow the government to tax them since they own the governments (and the media will not report those since they also own the media)?

Lynn has not provided a rational solution to this sorry situation obviously because he does not have any. In fact I have not come across anyone who seemed to understand this problem in its entirety for what it is and then come up with a sensible answer (or it is possible that those who understand the situation is too scared to tell it the way it is and come up with rational solutions).

When we turn on the US media mostly we hear from television personalities are that we should give even more tax cuts to those wealthy few who own both the businesses and the government. They don't tell us where to go to collect revenue. They also go on talking about the need to cut more and more expenditure (except the welfare for the rich) but do not point out where to cut the expenditure specifically. Scared of the media wrath, some cities have begun to eliminate even their police departments. They may find it much less threatening to eliminate the police department than asking (in other words taxing) those few people in the city who hold most of the money to help them out; hell hath no fury like the super wealthy requested a sacrifice. Ultimately the super wealthy have the money to hire private security (as it is done in places like Brazil) whereas the middleclass is who will be exposed to crimes by the destitute with nothing to lose.

I am glad Lynn wrote this book although reading it depressed me as much as reading any book that contains political truth or hearing any political show giving us facts and truth. The truth has to be known even if it is bitter. Unfortunately this book will not be read by those who can make a difference in this world. And that is a thought that makes us totally helpless. I hope somehow someone will find a way to get this book to the right people (if there are still right people with influence left).

This is one of the best books I have ever read AND I believe it is one of the most important books that we will see in many years. Our world has changed and Lynn is the first to tell us how.Ron

Many people I now were outraged when the government bailed out Wall Street firms while stating they were "too big to fail". It was not just the money involved, although that was a significant portion of their anger. They simply did not understand how a company had become too big to fail. The author here explains exactly how that started and where we are now, and where we are headed if we do not make changes.

Beginning during the Reagan years, antitrust laws were viewed as something that should not be enforced with rigor and that "free markets" would allow companies to grow, consolidate and save consumers money by economy of scale. This view continued on through Bush, Clinton and Bush Jr. and represents where we stand now. Corporations have indeed consolidated, and in the process they have come to monopolize entire segments of the economy.

While they were busy grabbing up other companies, they were also busy sending jobs and machinery overseas, along with the technical knowledge needed to be creative. Research and development budgets stagnated, and while prices did fall, so did the number of choices available to us as consumers. And, because corporations had swallowed up all the competition, we are in a situation where entire markets will collapse if these corporations collapse.

They book is an eye opening read into what has happened over the past several decades and exposes why it happened in addition to who is responsible. If I had a complaint, it is that the book is dense with economic terms, and the author sometimes strays into economic history that is not needed for an understanding of the discussion.

I would strongly recommend this book to all! It may be a dense read. But it also contains important information about our economy and how we need to take it back!

As a small businessman who has seen the corporate deluge burying small American business, it's nice to see someone like Lynn come out with a book that explains in detail the onslaught of corporationism that is killing the American dream. This is a must read for all no matter what your political association is... otherwise capitalism as we use to know it will no longer exist.

One of Lynn's statements is so right on ..."American model of capitalism - of corporate monopolies supposedly "owned" by financiers who direct all their power to maximizing the production only of cash - builds vandalism right into the system."

Please read this book!!! Our future depends on it.

Once I started reading I couldn't put it down. While I don't agree with all the author's arguments, I found it to be a superb exegesis of the dangers of the nexus between economic and political power in the best Brandeis tradition, linking also to the American founders and their concerns about this problem in a free society -- including the fact that the American revolutionists dumped tea in the Boston harbor even though it was low in price, not high. Time to re-think where a tunnel-vision version of economics has led us with its obsession on "efficiency", narrowly defined, and this is as good a book as any to begin with.

If you thought the government was the source of our problems, be prepared for a wrenching change of viewpoint.

It's not. It's Big Business, and they're tickled pink when people blame the government for the mess we're in. Mr. Lynn is a conservative economist, and he pulls the plug on all the current wisdom with example after example after example after... of what has gone wrong with our economic system and who is responsible.

I had no idea that I had been living in Hitler's dream of multinational corporations; after reading Mr. Lynn's thoroughly researched and well thought-out book, I no longer have any doubt. If this book doesn't scare you, you're one of the people at the top who's profiting from this destruction.

It should be required reading in every introductory economics course. It should also be read by all literate Americans.

We're already on the road to becoming another Mexico; let's hope enough people do what's necessary to stop it.