Corporate Welfare: Crony Capitalism That Enriches the Rich.

• Author: Sorrentino, Nick
• Position: Book review

* Corporate Welfare: Crony Capitalism That Enriches the Rich

By James T. Bennett

New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 2015.

Pp. 226. $44.95 hardcover.

James T. Bennett's new book Corporate Welfare: Crony Capitalism That Enriches the Rich examines American corporatism from the early days of the republic to recent battles surrounding the renewal of the Export-Import Bank of the United States. Long have special interests sought to manipulate government for financial gain in the United States, and Bennett chronicles these exploits with wit and humor. Though it may seem that the current swarm of lobbyists and crony capitalists is a relatively new plague, it is not. The cronies have always crawled across Capitol Hill, the political swamps that surround it, and the hinterlands.

Bennett begins by examining the emergence of the mercantilist philosophy embodied by Alexander Hamilton and his acolytes in the early years of the United States. Pretty much from the get-go, powerful private economic interests have jockeyed for access to the public purse. Hamilton's Report on the Subject of Manufactures outlined to Congress the case for state-sponsored "help" to business. Business left to its own devices would not produce the maximum good for the new nation, he argued. The federal government must guide the beast commerce. Ah, what a familiar refrain.

And so Bennett begins the sordid tale of American corporate welfare and crony capitalism. From Hamilton and the early anti-Jeffersonians to the Whigs, the Republicans, the "robber barons," right through the Progressive Era, and into the modern era after Hoover, at every stage of American development cronies have exploited the taxpayer and regulatory apparatus for private gain.

Bennett focuses primarily on four areas of cronyism, all from the past century: the Supersonic Transport (SST) battles of the 1960s and 1970s; the doling out of incentives paid by taxpayers to manufacturing firms primarily in the American South in the mid-twentieth century; the use of eminent domain by corporations in Detroit and Toledo; and last, the "poster boy" of crony capitalism, the Export- Import Bank of the United States. All four cases are well documented, and as the instances of corporate welfare are deconstructed, one is struck by the audacity of the players. I write about crony capitalism every day, and even I found instance after instance of abuse in Corporate Welfare that gave me pause.

The jewel of the book, which is excellent...