Blast from the past: Consummate capitalist reminds us there's no free market
LP note: This article from 17 years ago is more than relevant today to exposing the empty rhetoric of GOP presidential candidates, President Obama (who used the term "free trade" erroneously in his 2012 State of the Union address) and nearly all members of Congress — not to mention politicians across the spectrum and in every state. Consummate quote:
Dwayne Andreas has made a fortune with the help of politicians from Hubert Humphrey to Bob Dole. But, he says, their talk of "free markets" is just wind.
By Dan Carney
July/August 1995 Mother Jones
Just off Route 48 east of Decatur, Ill., the corn fields suddenly stop and the vast web of grain elevators, industrial stills, and office buildings that constitutes Archer Daniels Midland Co.'s headquarters begins. It is a colossal expanse of steel and concrete that alters both landscape and sky with its giant gray boxes spewing out clouds of steam.
This is the place where corn, wheat, and soybeans from the American breadbasket are brought to be manufactured into the "food products" that go into everything from Campbell's Soups to La Choy Chinese dinners. In the middle of the complex, in a building behind a bronze statue of Ronald Reagan, down the hall from the world's largest private commodity trading floor, Dwayne Orville Andreas runs the world.
"Tell me," Andreas says to his number two man, who has just returned from a tour of the company's plants in Eastern Europe, "what do they do for us in Bulgaria? Do they fix the prices? Or is there some kind of a free market?"
This type of brashness typifies Andreas and his company, whether the issue is possible price-fixing in Bulgaria or influence-peddling in Washington. For no other U.S. company is so reliant on politicians and governments to butter its bread. From the postwar food-aid programs that opened new markets in the Third World to the subsidies for corn, sugar, and ethanol that are now under attack as "corporate welfare," ADM's bottom line has always been interwoven with public policy. To reinforce this relationship, Andreas has contributed impressively to the campaigns of politicians, from Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey to Bill Clinton and Bob Dole.
(Continued here.)
"There isn't one grain of anything in the world that is sold in a free market. Not one! The only place you see a free market is in the speeches of politicians."Dwayne's World
Dwayne Andreas has made a fortune with the help of politicians from Hubert Humphrey to Bob Dole. But, he says, their talk of "free markets" is just wind.
By Dan Carney
July/August 1995 Mother Jones
Just off Route 48 east of Decatur, Ill., the corn fields suddenly stop and the vast web of grain elevators, industrial stills, and office buildings that constitutes Archer Daniels Midland Co.'s headquarters begins. It is a colossal expanse of steel and concrete that alters both landscape and sky with its giant gray boxes spewing out clouds of steam.
This is the place where corn, wheat, and soybeans from the American breadbasket are brought to be manufactured into the "food products" that go into everything from Campbell's Soups to La Choy Chinese dinners. In the middle of the complex, in a building behind a bronze statue of Ronald Reagan, down the hall from the world's largest private commodity trading floor, Dwayne Orville Andreas runs the world.
"Tell me," Andreas says to his number two man, who has just returned from a tour of the company's plants in Eastern Europe, "what do they do for us in Bulgaria? Do they fix the prices? Or is there some kind of a free market?"
This type of brashness typifies Andreas and his company, whether the issue is possible price-fixing in Bulgaria or influence-peddling in Washington. For no other U.S. company is so reliant on politicians and governments to butter its bread. From the postwar food-aid programs that opened new markets in the Third World to the subsidies for corn, sugar, and ethanol that are now under attack as "corporate welfare," ADM's bottom line has always been interwoven with public policy. To reinforce this relationship, Andreas has contributed impressively to the campaigns of politicians, from Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey to Bill Clinton and Bob Dole.
(Continued here.)
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1 Comments:
I am not sure if this article is more laughable or absurd – using a company that has been caught price fixing is ironic (at best) in an agreement against the free market.
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