Crony Capitalism, or Plain-Old Capitalism?

Arthur MacEwan, Guest Blogger

Arthur MacEwan is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts-Boston and a columnist for Dollars & Sense magazine.

The Export-Import Bank, created in 1934, is a U.S. federal government agency that supplies loans or guarantees loans to foreign firms to finance their purchases of U.S. exports. Its supporters argue that it strengthens the U.S. economy and creates jobs in the United States by bolstering demand abroad for goods produced here.

For the Export-Import Bank to stay in existence, Congress must reauthorize it by the end of September. Its existence, however, has come under attack by the anti-big-government forces of the right. They claim that there is no justification for the government to provide this support for U.S. firms. If the buyers abroad of U.S. goods cannot get financing for the purchases from regular banks—i.e., in the “free market”—the U.S. exporters are charging prices that are too high. That is, the U.S. firms are not effectively competing in the “free market,” and it is not the job of government to subsidize their inefficient operations.

These critics of the Export-Import Bank claim it is simply “crony capitalism,” where well-connected firms are able to get handouts from the government. This, they argue, is not the way “real capitalism” should and can function. For example, in the June 25 edition of National Review Online, with an article titled “The Ex-Im Bank: Crony Capitalism in Action,” the editors wrote that the Bank “hands out generous loans and credit guarantees to a select number of corporations [and] is corrupt and poorly managed. …The bank has a long history of dealing with dodgy firms and doling out suspiciously large amounts of loans to certain companies.”

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