Lobbyists

New tangent, same podcast. Here's another Planet Money podcast, this one dealing with lobbying in the United States. A recent study has discovered that lobbying Congress yields inordinately large sums of money--to the point where it could be considered a lucrative business investment. This podcast goes right to source, interviewing Jack Abramoff. 

I found the podcast extremely relevant to what Stiglitz is saying in Making Globalization Work. On page 79 he writes, "Special interests are largely to blame--not special interests in the developing counties resisting trade liberalization, as proponents of trade liberalization complain, but special interests in the developed world shaping the agenda to benefit themselves, while leaving even the average citizen in their own countries worse off. The negotiators, in representing their immediate "clients"--the corporations that lobby them heavily and constantly, partly directly, partly through lobbying congress and the administration--often lose sight of the big picture, confusing the interests of these companies with America's national interests or, even worse, with what is good for the global trading system."

Interesting what he says about the average American citizen. In fact, Planet Money details how one particular act that was heavily lobbied, the American Jobs Creations Act, has (in retrospect) been condemned by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations as an act that "Did not produce any of the promised benefits of new jobs or increased research expenditures to spur economic growth". Corporations were given a 30% tax windfall and it did little to help the average citizen, a fact that sheds doubt on the relationship between corporate and American interests.