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Foreign Money, National Security, And The Midterm Elections
Posted: 31 Oct 2010 05:41 AM PDT
By Simon Johnson

Campaign contributions by non-citizens are a huge issue lurking behind
the midterm elections; they will be even more important in 2012.
Think about the economic dynamics:

Americans have a long-standing and well-founded aversion to foreign
involvement in their politics, and it is well-established that this
can happen in part through corporate “commercial” structures. Thomas
Jefferson objected to Alexander Hamilton’s plan for a national bank in
part because he feared this would become a stalking horse for the
British in some form (see Chapter 2 of 13 Bankers for the context).
Dubai Ports World was not allowed to invest in the United States – for
reasons of perceived national security. You may or may not think that
case was handled well, but we have the CFIUS process to vet foreign
direct investment for good reason.
The Supreme Court has determined that corporations can make political
contributions virtually without limit, apparently not understanding or
not caring that (a) management has a fiduciary responsibility to
shareholders, (b) globalization means more foreign shareholders on
average (for privately held companies and funds, as well as publicly
traded companies), and (c) at the margin, key strategic shareholders –
the people who provide extra capital when the chips are down –
increasingly tend to be foreign. Think about the role of Sovereign
Wealth Funds in providing funds to our banking system in 2007-08, or
the fact that Citigroup goes cap-in-hand to Saudi Arabia every decade
or so.
During the Reagan years and again, even more, under the Second
President Bush, the US ran a large current account deficit – reaching
6 percent of GDP before the 2008 crisis (and still around 3 percent of
GDP). You may think this a technical detail that is largely
irrelevant to the political process, but you would be wrong. We
finance our current account deficit with capital inflows from abroad
or, to put that more plainly: Foreigners buy and hold financial assets
in the United States. Some of those assets are US government
obligations but traditionally and increasingly non-US people have also
acquired claims on corporate entities – including common or preferred
stock.
There are good economic reasons to allow foreigners to buy financial
assets in the United States. We like to invest around the world and a
high degree of reciprocity is only reasonable.

The US dollar is the “reserve currency” of choice – for the past 50
years this is where countries and careful individuals have chosen to
keep their rainy day funds. This was a core idea behind the
international trading system constructed after 1945. You may not like
it, but what alternative exactly would you propose?

And there is nothing wrong per se with running a current account
deficit – although it would be much better if we used the inflow of
foreign capital to finance investment, rather than (as in the Bush
years) tax cuts that just further encourage overconsumption.

Irrespective of how you feel about foreign capital inflows in economic
terms, you have to face the political reality. As foreigners
accumulate claims on the United States, they will increasingly
diversify into corporate assets (in fact, this is the advice they get
from their Wall Street advisers). Some of these corporate assets
explicitly come with voting rights – but those are supposed to be
voting rights over the corporation (or investment fund), not voting
rights in political elections.

We have effectively enfranchised foreigners in US elections. This is
clearly and absolutely not what the drafters of the Constitutions had
in mind.

This dissonance between our claimed political values and the political
reality will grow over time – unless you think our current account
deficit will swing into surplus at any time in the future, the net
inflow of foreign capital will continue.

The only way to deal with this is to require complete disclosure by
all corporate entities (and similar “veils” like investment funds of
any kind) regarding the contributions they make to any organization or
individual involved in political messaging or campaigning.

To be sure, this would be onerous. Thomas Jefferson and his
colleagues would have wanted it no other way. The US Constitution was
not drawn up to protect the rights of foreign citizens. It defines
who is and who can become an American – and the rights and
responsibilities of those who would like to rule the United States.

And however you prefer to define our legitimate national security
interests, how are they consistent with letting foreign citizens
influence or even determine the outcome of our elections?