Citas

Responsabilidad de los administradores por infracciones legales

Los directivos de una empresa participan en un cartel. La empresa es sancionada por las autoridades de competencia. La empresa demanda a sus directivos pidiéndoles que la dejen indemne de tales sanciones…

the Court of Appeal … held that, …, a company may not recover competition law fines and the costs of a competition law investigation from the employees or directors involved in the infringement porque a claimant can not recover damages for the consequences of its own wrongful acts. It held that the wrongful acts in question were attributable to Safeway, as it was made personally liable for the cartel conduct concerned – it was not made vicariously liable for the acts of its employees… deterrence, would be undermined if companies were able to pass on their liability for competition law infringements to their employees.

Dudoso. Más razonable es considerar las infracciones de normas legales por parte de los administradores como supuestos de infracción de su deber de diligencia y no su deber de lealtad y, por tanto, aplicar la business judgment rule. Porque, en principio, la sociedad y sus directivos arreglarán esta cuestión vía salario (si el administrador responde frente a la sociedad por las infracciones de normas legales cometidas en beneficio de la sociedad, exigirá un salario mayor que si se le inmuniza frente a ellas.

Las causas de la crisis (R. J. Samuelson)

The boom did not begin with the rise of home prices, as is usually asserted. It began instead with the suppression of double-digit inflation in the early 1980s, an event that unleashed a quarter-century of what seemed to be steady and dependable prosperity. … As inflation fell, interest rates followed. The stock market soared. From 1979 to 1999, stock values rose 14-fold. Housing prices climbed, though less spectacularly. Enriched, Americans borrowed and spent more. But what started as a justifiable response to good economic news—lower inflation—slowly evolved into corrupting overconfidence, the catalyst for the reckless borrowing, overspending, financial speculation, and regulatory lapses that caused the bust…

Prosperity is almost everyone’s goal, but too much prosperity enjoy-ed for too long tends to destroy itself. It seems that periodic recessions and burst bubbles—at least those of modest proportions—serve a social purpose by reminding people of economic and financial hazards and by rewarding prudence. Milder setbacks may avert less frequent but larger and more damaging convulsions—such as the one we’re now experiencing—that shake the country’s very political and social foundations. But hardly anyone wants to admit this publicly. What politician is going to campaign on the slogan, “More Recessions, Please”?…

The trouble is that, like generals fighting the last war, we may be fighting the last economic crisis. Future threats to stability may originate elsewhere. One danger spot is globalization. Economies are intertwined in ways that are only crudely understood…. What looms as the most significant legacy of the crisis is a loss of economic control.

Y Tyler Cowen sobre el control de los déficit.

Los keynesianos pueden tener razón en teoría, pero los Estados entran en déficit en épocas de recesión y no en superávit en épocas de bonanza

Fiscal austerity may sometimes sound like a dogmatic religion, but fixed principles often help us do the right thing, especially when temptation beckons. Professor Buchanan argued that the real choice was between a religion of budget balance and a rule of illusion. Seeking an optimal technocratic path is not on the menu.