Whether you liked him or not, you have to admit George Steinbrenner was a great businessman.  He was a true American capitalist.  He understood the mechanics of supply and demand which is at the heart of free market pricing.  And, he sure did demand things.  To get fans in the seats at Yankee Stadium, he understood that you had to pay up for the best players.  He paid outrageous sums of money to the best ballplayers but he got results in return.  He turned an $8.8 million investment into a $1.6 billion ballclub.  Now that’s a return that even a HFT would be envious of.  Steinbrenner was one of the true “captains of industry” similar to other great American businessmen like J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller.  These types of men embodied the true spirit of American capitalism.  They built industries and raised capital for businesses that were responsible for creating millions of jobs and helping the American economy soar.  Nowadays, some of our modern day capitalists are only worried about shaving microseconds off of a trade so they can collect a liquidity rebate from a for-profit exchange.  Something seems to be going horribly wrong with our capitalist system.

 Here is how Wikipedia describes capitalism:

 Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production are privately owned; supply, demand, price, distribution, and investments are determined mainly by private decisions in the free market, rather than through a planned economy; and profit is distributed to owners who invest in businesses.

 But what has been happening to our American capitalistic spirit lately?  Yesterday, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce released a poll showing that only 57% of Americans say they support capitalism while 20% were neutral and 19% held negative views.  A recent Gallup poll showed that only 52% of people had a positive assessment of capitalism while 29% had a positive assessment of socialism. 

 We hope that this change in opinion is just temporary and a result of the devastating recession that we have been going through since 2008.  We also hope that the “animal spirits” of American business soon are revived and our economy comes roaring back.  But we also realize that you can’t build a recovery on hope and stimulus.  So far, this earnings season has seen two very pleasant surprises in Alcoa and Intel.  Let’s “hope” the surprises continue.

 One final note on George Steinbrenner, he was even a winner when he died.  Because he died in 2010, his estate will pay no federal estate tax.  You can thank Congress for that since they never got around to closing that loophole.