“Corporate America’s cash pile has hit its highest level in half a century.”

The serious journals of capitalism, those journals that are produced solely for the capitalist class to talk to each other about the system they govern and how best to run it, are very interesting for us to read. The real world is more clearly spelled out in them.

The Wall Street Journal points out on Friday, “Corporate America’s cash pile has hit its highest level in half a century.” The journal is talking only about non-financial corporations here and they are “sitting on $1.93 trillion in cash and other liquid assets”.
What this reflects is the reluctance of the owners of money, capitalists, to invest that money in the process of capital accumulation, in other words, in producing things. Instead, they park this cash in safe havens like bonds or treasury’s. That may be safe but with interest rates so low, it’s not very profitable; “it reflects the relatively few opportunities they see to deploy their cash more creatively.”, the journal adds.

So capitalists are on strike, they are on a strike of capital rather than putting people to work and boosting the economy. So we have idle workers, empty houses, factories and productive forces running at way below their potential or shut down despite the fact that society needs new superstructure, facilities for public transportation, education, public health and so much more.

This strike of capital has gone on for a while and their government has even given them public funds, borrowed, most of it, in the hope that they would use it to invest in production so that they can make profit and at the same time put people to work and get the economy going, but to no avail.

The Wall Street Journal follows up on the story today announcing that US president Barak Obama will convene a “one day summit of corporate chiefs” Wednesday to convince them to support his efforts. He’s feeling a little more optimistic in this regard as he’s backtracked on pretty much all his promises for change that got him in to office. His most recent concession to the billionaires was to reverse his position on the Bush era tax cuts, extending them to include all Americans as opposed to capping them at $200,000 for individuals and $250,000 for families. The Bush tax cuts for the wealthy were a major contributor, along with their highly profitable predatory wars, to the deficit and spiraling government debt.

The Obama administration has let it be known he is ready to compromise on regulation as well with a “balanced approach”. The Business Round Table is thrilled, “Regulations have been a fault line with business, so compromise on them would be a very welcome change” says the Round Tables’ Johanna Schneider.

Wednesday’s meeting will be private, unlike previous meetings, which also makes the corporate chief executives happy because the public forum “prevented them from speaking candidly”.  They don't want anyone sending them to Wikileaks.   It makes them “seem like political theater”, the CEO’s complain. You can why see they want to silence Wikileaks. Ms Schneider, the Business Round Table executive director is excited about Obama’s approach as it shows “there’s a lot of respect, and the view that this could open the door to further compromises by the President and Congress.” She says.

What happens when we go on strike? They call in the troops. They use the police and the military to smash our strike in the interests of the employers. Sure, they’ll call meetings with workers’ leaders and behind closed doors, get together with them to “peacefully” end it favorably for the employers or even better, ensure strikes never take place, but the class bias is here for all to see.

Reading this should lead us as workers to question what it means to hold capital. To not release money or invest money in productive process. Once we clearly understand what capital is and where this money comes from it gives us a really secure footing, an understanding about the world in which we live that enables us to develop a real program to change the situation and build an alternative way of organizing production.

I hope to blog a bit about that in language that makes sense to us as workers.