Tuesday, March 31, 2009

We Breached Contract Law, now We Breach Corporate Law

I assume when the President was at Harvard he took the basic course on corporate law. One of the classic texts is written by Robert Clark, who may very well have taught it at the time. It is a good text by Clark, entitled just Corporate Law. It covers the main points. The law has evolved but it is the backbone of our economy and our culture.

The body of corporate law is almost as old as contract law. When I commented on the AIG contract issue I said let them sue the Government but not just trash the all Contract law issues. However in the GM case we have a real problem. The US Government is NOT a shareholder of GM. It is a debt holder. It cannot, without the process of law, restructure the company, only the shareholders can. Well in the last few days, all of corporate law has been destroyed and it appears as if no one has noticed. Corporate law and contract law are the backbone of the capitalist system. The current Administration has just trashed both! Does anyone at all care? It appears not.

What should the President have done? Well like anyone one else, Kirk Kerkorian and others, you take it to the shareholders. You oust the Board in a legal manner and then the new Board replaces management. Debt holders, no matter how large, cannot oust anyone. Buy the stock and then call a shareholder's meeting, vote the stock, and then put your people in. That is the law. NOT what the current Administration just did. That just destroyed the law! This is a coup, we as a country have been taken over and no one is paying attention.

What others laws will be trashed next, the Constitution, perhaps, and all other inconvenient laws at the time.