Bush brothers practice capitalism for the rich

The president's speech last week on business reform was a test of whether this country still can muster a gag reflex.

It wasn't that he did little but urge stiffer penalties on conduct that's already illegal. That's fine. With the public sickened by spreading revelations of corporate scandal, President Bush's advisors will see to it that he doesn't remain as far behind the angry wave of reform as he currently is.

What was upsetting wasn't his limpness; it was his hypocrisy. For at bottom, the approach to business that the president was deploring was his own -- and that of his brothers Neil and Jeb, our own governor.

The Bushes' means of getting rich wasn't crooked. It was just a clubby, frat-boy kind of wheeling and dealing, which originated nothing and created nothing, and which depended on closeted undertakings and private favors.

Because rich men were eager to associate with the illustrious Bush name, they got no-risk invitations to low-risk deals, with their downside covered by somebody else -- stockholders or taxpayers. Everybody understood that they were there to get rich quickly, and they kept one eye on the exit door.

In those respects, the Bush brothers exemplify what has been a defining style of American business for the past quarter-century, which reduces capitalism to an ATM: a fountain of cash for the lucky initiates who get the PIN number.

That's a radical departure from the boring old idea that companies exist to prosper and grow by producing at a reasonable cost and selling at an acceptable price, while paying fair wages and earning a decent return for the people whose enterprise and bankroll made it all possible.

Under ATM capitalism, businesses exist to throw off as much cash as possible, as soon as possible, to the people who own, run or manage to fiddle profit from them.