“股东价值最大化”如何使国家战略储备最小化:呼吸机惨败引发的5.3万亿美元流行病防范问题

William Lazonick, M. Hopkins
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引用次数: 9

摘要

截至2020年7月21日,美国仅占世界人口的4.2%,占全球确诊病例的26.0%,占死亡病例的23.1%。这场悲剧的严重程度引发了一个极其重要的反事实问题:如果在2020年1月有称职和坚定的政治领导到位,表明疫情严重程度的情报就会出现,美国作为一个国家会如何发展?这个问题的部分答案在于确定开发、生产和提供“对策”的组织和技术能力——个人防护装备(PPE)、呼吸机、诊断测试、治疗和疫苗——一个有准备的联邦政府本可以动员起来应对大流行。必要能力的主要存储库是政府机构和商业公司,对抗措施的开发、生产和交付严重依赖于政府-商业合作(gbc)。我们认为,大流行防范和应对项目的成功取决于全球基础设施的实力。在这篇文章中,我们关注的是战略国家储备(SNS)呼吸机的特殊情况。我们追溯了联邦政府内部到奥巴马政府任期结束时,当前流行病防范和应对体系的历史演变。然后,我们分析了由美国卫生与公众服务部(HHS)准备和响应助理部长(ASPR)下属的生物医学研究与发展局(BARDA)发起和实施的开发SNS呼吸机的特定GBCs。BARDA与两家不同的公司先后启动了两项gbc,一项始于2010年,另一项始于2014年,目的是为SNS开发便携式、易于使用且价格合理的呼吸机。我们表明,这些合作的力量在于与BARDA签约的创新呼吸机制造商。当这些创新型制造商落入信奉“股东价值最大化”(MSV)理念的商业公司的控制之下时,这些GBCs的弱点就显现出来了。在每个案例中,金融化的商业公司都破坏了向SNS提供呼吸机的开发和交付。然后,我们解释了为什么一般来说,我们应该预期由MSV驱动的商业公司将成为gbcs中不可靠的合作伙伴——以牺牲国家对Covid-19大流行等紧急情况的准备和响应为代价。这种缺乏可靠性的根源在于企业的战略导向,它们把公司的股票市场估值置于其在生产产品和服务方面的创新表现之上。新冠肺炎危机已经表明,在美国经济中,股市的功能不是支持价值创造,而是作为价值提取的主要手段。最明显的价值提取形式是公司在公开市场上回购自己的股票——又名股票回购——通常是在以现金股息的形式向股东大量分配的基础上进行的。在2010-2019年的十年间,标准普尔500指数成份股公司花了5.3万亿美元用于回购,占净收入的54%,此外还有3.8万亿美元(占净收入的39%)作为股息分配给股东。鉴于这种“掠夺性的价值榨取”,我们以“5.3万亿美元”的问题作为本文的结尾处,向那些信奉MSV意识形态的企业高管和董事们提出这个问题,他们必须为美国未能应对新冠肺炎疫情,以及气候变化和收入不平等承担重大责任。问题是:你领导的公司为什么要进行股票回购?我们特别向三家公司的高管和董事提出了这个问题,截至2020年,这三家公司是历史上回购自己股票最多的公司:微软(Microsoft)排名第三,埃克森美孚(ExxonMobil)排名第二,苹果(Apple)排名第一。我们还向2019年8月签署了《商业圆桌会议(BRT)公司宗旨声明》的任何公司的高管和董事会成员提出了这个问题,该声明明确拒绝了BRT 1997年关于“公司主要为股东服务”的声明,取而代之的是重新定义“公司的目的是促进‘为所有美国人服务的经济’”。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
How “Maximizing Shareholder Value” Minimized the Strategic National Stockpile: The $5.3 Trillion Question for Pandemic Preparedness Raised by the Ventilator Fiasco
With just 4.2 percent of the world’s population, the United States had, as of July 21, 2020, 26.0 percent of its confirmed Covid-19 cases and 23.1 percent of its deaths. The magnitude of the tragedy raises the critically important counterfactual question of how the United States as a nation would have fared had there been competent and committed political leadership in place when, during January 2020, intelligence indicating the severity of the unfolding pandemic became available. A partial answer to this question lies in identifying the organizational and technological capabilities to develop, produce, and deliver “countermeasures”—personal protective equipment (PPE), ventilators, diagnostic tests, therapies, and vaccines—that a prepared federal administration would have been able to mobilize to respond to the pandemic. Main repositories of the necessary capabilities are government agencies and business firms, with the development, production, and delivery of countermeasures heavily reliant on government-business collaborations (GBCs). We contend that the success of projects for pandemic preparedness and response depends on the strength of GBCs. In this essay, we focus on the particular case of ventilators for the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS). We trace the historical evolution within the federal government of the current system of pandemic preparedness for and response through the end of the Obama administration. We then analyze the particular GBCs to develop ventilators for the SNS initiated and implemented by the Biomedical Research and Development Authority (BARDA), under the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). BARDA initiated two successive GBCs, one beginning in 2010 and the second in 2014, with two different business firms, for the purpose of developing portable, easy-to-use, and affordable ventilators for the SNS. We show that the strength of these collaborations lay with the innovative ventilator manufacturers with which BARDA contracted. The weakness of these GBCs appeared when these innovative manufacturers fell under the control of business corporations committed to the ideology of “maximizing shareholder value” (MSV). In each case, the financialized business corporation undermined development and delivery of ventilators to the SNS. We then explain why, in general, we should expect that business firms driven by MSV will be unreliable partners in GBCs—at the expense of the nation’s preparedness for and response to an emergency such as the Covid-19 pandemic. This lack of reliability is rooted in the strategic orientation of corporations which have put stock-market valuation of the company ahead of its innovative performance in producing goods and services. The Covid-19 crisis has already revealed the extent to which, in the U.S. economy, the stock market functions not to support value creation but rather as the prime means of value extraction. The most overt form of value extraction is the corporate practice of open-market repurchases of the company’s own shares—aka stock buybacks—typically done in addition to copious distributions to shareholders in the form of cash dividends. In the decade 2010-2019, companies in the S&P 500 Index spent $5.3 trillion on buybacks, representing 54 percent of net income, in addition to $3.8 trillion (39 percent of net income) distributed to shareholders as dividends. In view of this “predatory value extraction,” we conclude this essay with the “$5.3 trillion” question for executives and directors of corporations who, in their embrace of MSV ideology, must bear significant responsibility for the failure of the United States to respond to not only the Covid-19 pandemic but also climate change and income inequity. The question: Why does the company that you head do stock buybacks? In particular, we direct this question to the executives and directors of three corporations that, as of the year 2020, are the biggest repurchasers of their own stock in history: Microsoft at number three, ExxonMobil at number two, and Apple at number one. We also pose this question to the senior executives and board members of any company engaged in the practice who, in August 2019, signed the Business Roundtable (BRT) Statement of the Purpose of a Corporation, which explicitly rejected the BRT’s 1997 pronouncement that “corporations exist principally to serve shareholders,” replacing it with a redefinition of “the purpose of the corporation to promote ‘an economy that serves all Americans’.”
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