Look at the way Putin treats Rus­sia’s bil­lion­aires

Edward Luce, as always, gives us much to think about (“Wall Street’s bar­gain with Trump”, Opin­ion, Janu­ary 25).

Wall Street lead­ers are rightly con­cerned about their rela­tion­ship and that of their com­pan­ies with the gov­ern­ment in Wash­ing­ton, and the need to hedge their bets on the upcom­ing Biden-Trump face-off.

But in this par­tic­u­lar con­test, it seems Wall Street’s titans should emphas­ise the rule of law over any nar­row cor­por­ate interests. Amer­ica’s demo­cracy and the unbiased rule of law is the found­a­tion of indi­vidual and cor­por­ate suc­cess.

I find it amaz­ing that any of Amer­ica’s cor­por­ate lead­ers can sup­port Don­ald Trump or any of the other author­it­arian-prone can­did­ates (regard­less of how much they think their taxes will be reduced).

Why would they want to jeop­ard­ise their exist­ing status by help­ing to elect a per­son who, on any per­ceived slight, would use whatever means to crush them and their com­pan­ies.

Given a choice between inde­pend­ence or a few more dol­lars in their bank accounts, I sus­pect most busi­ness titans would prefer to live on their own terms.

We only have to look at Putin’s Rus­sia for an example of how bil­lion­aires are treated under a dic­tat­or­ship.

Mark Kaulas
Chicago, IL, US