Strange bedfellows at BCE : Ontario teachers and U.S. private equity funds

Strange Bedfellows at BCE: Ontario Teachers and U. S. Private Equity Funds MelWatkins* Free market madness swirls around the globe, leaving its mark every- where, creating, in the name of freedom, yet more monstrous, ma- rauding, monopolizing, corporations—freedom of the market is monopoly of the market—pouring out propaganda in the guise of a free press, appropriating knowledge, feasting on disas [...] On the one hand, the shares of BCE, formerly Bell Canada, for a century one of the stocks most widely held by the Canadian public, are now in private hands where disclosure and transparency are minimal. [...] There is no presumption that the employees of such bought-up companies, or anyone other than the select list of the equity fund’s shareholders, benefit from this shuf- fling of the cards. [...] The increasing prevalence of such activities, which benefit the few at the expense of themany, presumably helps to explain why the overall distribution of income and wealth has worsened in developed countries. [...] The conventional wisdom, of the corporate élites and of econo- mists of the orthodox persuasion, smoothly rationalizes all of this, though as much by assumption as by research.