West Virginia governor James C. Justice II seeks to fill the Senate seat left open by Joe Manchin’s retirement. “Big Jim” Justice, like Manchin, is a coal executive and former Democrat. But in contrast to Manchin’s run-of-the-mill crony capitalism, Justice has pursued innovative business practices that pushed the mines of West Virginia deep into the grasp of global financial capital.
Justice did it, he says, to keep his mines open and his businesses out of bankruptcy. But Justice’s strategy has meant that a string of unrelated third parties — JPMorgan, a Russian steel oligarch, Credit Suisse — get a little bit richer every time a coal miner goes to work for Justice. And West Virginians — local governments, Justice’s miners, small businesses, and local banks — hold the bag. If this is the way to stay out of bankruptcy, Justice’s prescribed treatment is worse than the illness.
How did Big Jim make such a big mess, and why? To be fair, it is not all his fault. Jim Justice’s business fortune, like the fortune of West Virginia itself, is impossible to understand without reference to the ups and downs of global commodity markets. Dealing with these commodity cycles has been the central preoccupation of the coal business for several decades. If the unemployment rate is the most important economic indicator for the world’s industrial regions, the price of commodities is the most important economic indicator for its resource-extraction regions.
Justice is a creature of resource extraction. Justice’s money comes from two sources: coal…
La suite est à lire sur: jacobin.com
Auteur: Branden Adams
