The Center for Corporate Policy is a non-profit, non-partisan public interest organization working to curb corporate abuses and make corporations publicly accountable.

    The latest:

In the June 8 issue of The Nation, William Greider introduced "bold ideas for a new economy," a collection of stimulating articles, including pieces by numerous CCP advisors and colleagues. Topics covered include benefit corporations (learn more), a speculation tax (learn more), proposals to support publicly owned state banks (learn more here and here), reform limited liability laws, revive anti-trust laws and restructure failed corporate economic models -- a theme we touched upon here.

We told you so. The New York Times recently reported (Adam Liptak, "Justices Offer Receptive Ear to Business Interests," 12/18/20) that during the past session the Roberts Court sided with corporations 13 out of 16 times. (The story is based in part on research conducted by the Constitutional Accountability Center.) It's time We the People took back our Constitution, first by reversing the ongoing expansion of Corporate Speech rights. Find out how you can get involved at Free Speech for People and Move to Amend.

New Report Describes How to Restructure Citi in the Public Interest. On 3/4/10 Citi CEO Vikram Pandit told the Congressional Oversight Panel that Citi is "fundamentally different from the company we inherited when I became CEO," pointing to increased cash reserves (from a massive "yard sale") and a substantial reduction in the bank's "exposure to risky assets." With the company's stock price rising in recent months, it appears that investors agree. Yet reports that Citi is "better" may still be premature. For instance, in December, Bloomberg reported that despite paying back tens of billions in TARP loans, Citi still holds $617 billion in troubled assets. In addition, the Treasury's most recent report indicates that the notional value of Citi's derivatives is still at least 30 times the total underlying value of its assets. Moreover, it seems fair to ask how anyone can really have a handle on the company's balance sheet given how much of its operations exist in the shadows. For instance, GAO's most recent survey indicates that Citi has the most offshore tax haven subsidiaries of any Fortune 100 company.

Regardless of its financial status, many experts agree that the government should leverage its remaining share and break up Citi and other "too-big-to-fail" institutions in order to stabilize the financial system and make it serve more productive sectors of the economy. With that in mind, for our new report, Restructuring Citi in the Public Interest. we asked a variety of experts how the bank should be broken up, and to what purpose.

Our Response to the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. FEC: A major attack on Democracy.

What should be done with Fannie and Freddie? The Obama administration will release a draft proposal soon. The options were debated at a recent roundtable filmed by C-SPAN.

Some are saying that President Obama sold out to Wall Street. True or not, his response to the financial collapse has been too cautious. The president's recent proposal to make big bailed-out banks pay taxpayers back is a good step forward, but he should also follow his own suggestion to tax speculative financial transactions by supporting the "Make Wall Street Pay for the Restoration of Main Street Act of 2010," H.R. 4191, which would tax speculative transactions, including derivatives trades (95% of which are held by the 5 biggest banks). To learn more go here and here. For other steps that Congress should take, go here.

Offshore Tax Havens suck about $100 billion in taxes out of the U.S. each year. Read our response to Obama's proposed overseas corporate tax reforms and go here to learn more.

Instead of cap and trade, let's make the polluters pay. Economist William Nordhaus calls a carbon tax "the most efficient strategy for slowing or preventing climate change.

CCP's Reaction to Obama Administration's Executive Pay Policy (2009)
Learn about CEO Pay Issues and read our Suggestions for How to Crack Down on CEO Greed.

Stop the War Profiteers:
a) The Blackwater/Xe saga illustrates a key problem brought about by excessive privatization: Private military corporations (PMCs) cannot be effectively regulated. Instead, the best approach has been suggested by Rep. Janschakowsky (D-IL), who is reintroducing The Stop Outsourcing Security Act, which would phase out the use of mercenary firms for inherently-governmental operations.
b) The Honest Leadership and Accountability in Contracting Act (S. 606) was introduced by Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) in 2007. This bill would bar law-breaking companies from new contracts, help whistleblowers and improve accountability and oversight. See [Bill Summary; our response and analysis]
c) "The Clean Contracting Act" (H.R. 6909) was introduced by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) in the House. [Summary HR 6909] These bills apply lessons learned from Iraq and Katrina contracting to all federal contracts. For more information about war profiteering go here.

    Building A Long-Term Challenge to Corporate Power:

Taming the Giant Corporation was the theme of a 2007 Conference that we helped organize. If you missed the conference, you can watch most of the presentations online.

Also, be sure to read "Using Charters to Redesign Corporations in the Public Interest" (2010) and "Revisiting Corporate Charters" (Published in 2007 by Corporation 2020) The two papers build on an earlier paper called "Corporations and the Public Purpose."

In 2007, the Center for Corporate Policy helped develop the Strategic Corporate Initiative -- a long-term approach to bringing corporations back under public control. To learn more about the SCI report, see Corporate Ethics International's description of the project.

One of the policies identified in the SCI report as key was Public Funding of Elections, which would make it easier to challenge corporate-funded candidates in elections. Public funding has been successful in a growing number of states and cities. Federal candidates should co-sponsor or pledge their support for the Fair Elections Now Act (S. 1285) and (H.R. 7022) -- which were both reintroduced in the current session of Congress with bi-partisan support. To learn more, see You Street and Public Campaign.

Additional CCP Topics, Projects and Investigations:

CCP's List of Recommended Reading
Size Matters: The Failure to Address Concentrated Economic Power
Corporate Bribery Page
Congressional Ethics Reform
Wal-Mart Information Page.
Supreme Court nominations.
A Loaded Chamber: Big Business Attacks Sarbanes-Oxley and Other Post-Enron Reforms
2006 Budget Proposal.
The 2004 elections
State and Local Policies.