Bailouts make us ask: what is the future of the corporation?

Next up on the bailout list: car companies, cities, healthcare, schools. I guess nobody’s business model is working very well, and now everybody needs money from the U.S. federal government, which of course is half a trillion in the red this year. Companies losing billions want loans from a government that’s losing billions.

I think that a lot of things are going to need a redesign in the next few years, to put it mildly.

Regardless, yesterday’s stars were the automotive CEOs who flew into to Washington DC to plead for the U.S. government to provide aid to its most important companies.

But wait, are they American companies? Chris Kelly at the Huffington Post provides an excellent bit of polemic, reminding us that Chrysler is actually owned by a $60 billion hedge fund called Cerberus Capital which owns, in addition to Chrysler:

A Japanese bank called Aozora
A Japanese real estate company called Showa Jisho
A Japanese golf course company called Kokusai Kogyo
An Israeli bank called Bank Leumi
A German bank called Handel und Kredit Bankhaus
A reinsurance company called Scottish Re, with headquarters in Bermuda
A British TV rental chain called Boxclever…etc.

This is a great point – we’ve spent decades making global capital so fungible, so fluid that it readily cross borders, ignores nationality, changes hands without making news. So can a corporation possibly be a national entity for which a certain government (and its taxpayers!) might claim responsibility?

If Chrysler isn’t a potent enough example, how about Citibank, which is getting “trouble asset relief” from the U.S. Treasury but is now is owned to an even greater extent by Saudi princes?

This begs HUGE questions. What is a corporation? To whom does it belong? What is the relationship between a corporation and the nation-states of the world?

If you’re in business today, and plan on staying in business through 2009 and beyond, these aren’t just philosophical discussions. This is your future. Give it some thought.