Book review: "Cannibal Capitalism" shines light on Occupy

— -- The 2012 presidential election may be a referendum on President Obama's job performance, specifically his ability to improve an economy that continues to teeter along a dangerous edge.

But with the coming of the Occupy movement, there is another possibility: The upcoming election will be an appraisal of the nature of modern capitalism — its merits, limits and ills. And the candidate who speaks in harmony with the electorate's assessment of capitalism will win.

Perhaps no book could be timelier for the Occupiers and their blitz against what they consider unchecked capitalism than Michael C. Hill's Cannibal Capitalism: How Big Business and The Feds Are Running America.

The author, a former journalist for The Washington Post, works as a venture capitalist in Washington, D.C. Before the economic collapse of 2008, Hill had created a $40 million home-building business. By the peak of the crisis, his company was bankrupt.

"At the end of 2006, we thought we were moving into the big league. As we were taken on by a reputable investment bank, my company was ramping up to go national. Our cash flow slowly dried up as sales went cold, and I mean stone cold. We were hemorrhaging all of our cash."

Hill describes the broader conditions that drove the economy south and the problems that continue to plague the financial system. He identifies the economy's most self-destructive features — income and wealth disparity, anti-competitive business practices, hoarding wealth at the expense of the working-class. Add to these the polarized ideologies of the two major political parties and the resulting dysfunctional government, he says, and you get the nightmarish American economic picture.

This is the "cannibal capitalism" that Hill deplores and believes is destroying "the promise of ideal capitalism." To Hill, cannibal capitalism encourages greed, prefers gambling to investing and advances the economic interest of the top echelon ahead of Middle America.

Hill contends that the housing crisis "was merely a rapid acceleration of the slow, consistent pattern of a much longer period, and portended the trajectory of the national economy."

While echoing the sentiments of the Occupy movement, Hill insists that the solution to American economic unrest is not the abandonment of capitalism — just the abandonment of cannibal capitalism.

"It is to the proponents of these sentiments that I dedicate this work, because I agree with them completely in terms of ideology — even though they are wrong. The right thing to do ideologically is the wrong thing to do practically."

But Hill's prescriptions for the economy are not particularly novel.

"Ideological dogma must be broken down," he writes. Democrats and Republicans must agree to compromise on sensible economic reform.

"For the economy to be best positioned for the 21st century global economy, the focus must be on exports and international business development," he says. In order to do this, we must focus intently on early public education.

Although lacking specificity in some instances, Hill's analysis of cannibal capitalism's hazards is well worth the attention of readers, especially Occupiers who have yet to hone a cohesive message.

Heffner is a freelance writer based in New York and Boston