It’s time for “job-creators” to create more jobs, and private equity can help lead the charge.
Could American corporations increase their hiring for the sake of patriotism? That’s the suggestion this morning from NY Times columnist Joe Nocera, who believes that we must re-frame our brand of capitalism:
With all their cash, companies shouldn’t be waiting for Congress to give them tax incentives to hire people. They should be trying to jump-start the economy — and fend off another recession — by making investments, and hiring workers, that will lead to renewed prosperity. The only way that’s going to happen, however, is if our society implicitly makes the kind of compact that German society makes explicitly: We have to be willing to allow companies to sacrifice short-term profits for the long-term good of the country.
Three points (in reverse order of Term Sheet relevance):
1. I agree that it’s time for companies to begin using their record bank accounts to begin hiring, which is a point I made last Friday about Mitt Romney’s “people are corporations” comment (which was regrettably taken out of context). In many cases, the “uncertainly” excuse is a pretense for cowardice. Show me the last time we had economic certainty, and I’ll show you a piece of fiction.
2. I disagree with Nocera that companies should sacrifice short-term profits for the good of the country. They should do it for the good of the companies. What we really need is a reworked Wall Street culture more than a reworked corporate culture, so that the meet/beat game is replaced by rewards for long-term growth.
3. Private equity could help lead on that last point. Every PE exec I know extols the benefits of being private, because portfolio companies have the flexibility to make investments that will produce long-term benefit at the (possible) expense of short-term balance sheets.
Part of this message is self-serving, since PE execs are trying to take public companies private. But it also could be used far more broadly than that, as a clarion call for the public markets to begin paying attention more to the big picture than the immediate one. Private equity has data, anecdotes, money and access to all sorts of power. This could be its opportunity to reverse its negative public image, and do something good for both corporate America and America at large.