Time.
More than questions of power, money hates democracy because democracy takes time.
Markets don't take time. Markets can move immediately. Or so money believes.
Of course, not all markets move immediately. Real estate doesn't move immediately. Corporate investments don't move immediately. When decisions have to be made, corporate boards can make them quickly. In a crisis, money can accelerate things.
Democracy can't. In a crisis, democracy actually grinds more slowly. Everyone whose ox may be gored (and that means everyone) wants to be heard in a crisis, wants equity in a crisis.
But crises don't wait. And when money is on the line in a crisis, time is money. Thus money loses patience with democracy, it would rather have autocracy at that point.
This is money's problem. Money has ADD. Money would rather have dictatorship than democracy, but once the dictator comes in they tend not to leave. And the first thing the dictator does, after becoming dictator, is go after the money. True for every dictator, even one who came in under the banner of money.
All this is highly relevant right now in the context of Europe. There's a process that must be gone through. There are negotiations that must be concluded. Then approvals must be granted. What I've found from studying money on Seeking Alpha lately is many don't appreciate the value of this. They demand decisions, now, decisions that favor their money. They tend to move quickly into racism and xenophobia waiting – assuming that Germans are militarists under the skin, and Greeks are shiftless, for instance.
Here's the thing. A decision made through a democratic process is going to stick. A decision made by a dictator may not. This is true in business as well as politics. How many times have you seen a deal come unstuck at the last minute, when one side decides they want one more concession? Happens all the time.
And business decisions are as subject to brinksmanship as democratic ones. Look at what happened with the NFL and NBA this year. One came right up the edge, the other looked over that edge into the abyss and nearly plunged in.
What I'm saying at the end is that sometimes money needs a nice big cup of STFU. Money is not the only thing that's important. Money's interests aren't the only ones. And the sooner financial journalists as well as the monied class realizes this, the more stable our democracies will become, and the richer we'll be as well.
