Michael Kinsley on the history of Avis rent-a-car:
Since 1946, Avis has been sold or reorganized 17 or 18 times, depending on how you count. Each time Avis changed hands or structure, there have been fees for bankers and fees for lawyers, bonuses for the top executives and theories about why this was exactly what the company needed.
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Modern capitalism has two parts: there’s business, and there’s finance. Business is renting you a car at the airport. Finance is something else. More and more of the news labeled “business” these days is actually about finance, and much of it is mystifying. Even if you can understand — just barely — how it works, you still wonder what the point is and why people who do it need to get paid so much. And you strongly suspect that the swirl of financial activity around Avis for the past six decades has had little or nothing to do with the business of renting cars.
Timeri Murari years ago wrote an interesting article about the stranglehold of financiers on businesses. He points out how even the stock market that supposedly offers a way out of the clutches of the money lender, continues to be in the financier's grip, with Bears and their badla financiers calling the shots.
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