Lobby In Usa
Páginas: 2 (486 palabras)
Publicado: 3 de octubre de 2011
Money and politics
Ask what your country can do for you
Oct 1st 2011 | New york | from the print edition
MUCH as some businesses whine about government intrusion, others do pretty well out of it.An index based on the amount of lobbying that American firms do has outperformed the broader market since its creation in 2008; data going back to 1998 show that it has done better over the longerterm, too.
The index is produced by Strategas, an investment-research firm. A first effort, to rank firms on the amount they spend on lobbying, was no use: it just corresponded with the largest firms.Strategas now looks at the intensity of lobbying—expenditure as a percentage of assets—to create an index of 50 firms that is revised quarterly.
In aggregate the results have been stunning,comparable to the returns of the most blistering hedge fund. The index has outperformed the S&P500 by 11% a year since 2002 (see chart). There have been bumps along the way: the index fell sharply in2008 and again this summer, when debt-ceiling brinkmanship raised the prospect of government austerity. But at other times, it seems remarkable that companies would do anything but lobby. A particularlyvivid example was in 2004, when an aggressive corporate campaign prompted Congress to grant a one-off tax holiday for American companies to repatriate foreign earnings. The outright return on lobbyingcosts, according to one of the various studies that served as inspiration for the Strategas index, was $220 for each $1 spent.
Firms that qualify for the index tend to be under the government’scosh. Tobacco companies are routinely threatened with every tax and sales restriction going, and are perennial fixtures on the list. So too are defence contractors. This year witnessed the entry into theindex of several private-education providers, an area that has been under scrutiny by the administration of Barack Obama, as well as medical firms worried about the myriad loose ends to be tied up...
Ask what your country can do for you
Oct 1st 2011 | New york | from the print edition
MUCH as some businesses whine about government intrusion, others do pretty well out of it.An index based on the amount of lobbying that American firms do has outperformed the broader market since its creation in 2008; data going back to 1998 show that it has done better over the longerterm, too.
The index is produced by Strategas, an investment-research firm. A first effort, to rank firms on the amount they spend on lobbying, was no use: it just corresponded with the largest firms.Strategas now looks at the intensity of lobbying—expenditure as a percentage of assets—to create an index of 50 firms that is revised quarterly.
In aggregate the results have been stunning,comparable to the returns of the most blistering hedge fund. The index has outperformed the S&P500 by 11% a year since 2002 (see chart). There have been bumps along the way: the index fell sharply in2008 and again this summer, when debt-ceiling brinkmanship raised the prospect of government austerity. But at other times, it seems remarkable that companies would do anything but lobby. A particularlyvivid example was in 2004, when an aggressive corporate campaign prompted Congress to grant a one-off tax holiday for American companies to repatriate foreign earnings. The outright return on lobbyingcosts, according to one of the various studies that served as inspiration for the Strategas index, was $220 for each $1 spent.
Firms that qualify for the index tend to be under the government’scosh. Tobacco companies are routinely threatened with every tax and sales restriction going, and are perennial fixtures on the list. So too are defence contractors. This year witnessed the entry into theindex of several private-education providers, an area that has been under scrutiny by the administration of Barack Obama, as well as medical firms worried about the myriad loose ends to be tied up...
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