WHEN WILL LARGE CORPORATIONS RETURN TO A BASIC PHILOSOPHY THAT WORKS FOR ALL?
Amongst all the business news of doom and gloom this week, the headline stealer was the speculation of the fate of once America’s greatest company, General Motors. With the help of President Obama, it appears G.M. will be bullied into bankruptcy. What is happening to this country, when the media and other self professed experts are so happy to tell us this is going to be a good deal for America? Over 250,000 more jobs directly and indirectly will be lost when G.M. emerges from bankruptcy. Add to that hundreds of thousands of existing retirees (forced and voluntary), current employees and suppliers’ employees who will find their living standards reduced to a subsistence level not much better than a turn of the twentieth century Chinese coolie. In the meantime Bank of America and J.P. Morgan Chase want to repay their TARP funds so they can go ahead and return to the days of paying out $billions in bonuses to the very scum bags who brought about the demise of the American worker.
For me, the solution is simple if America wants to return to greatness. It is not about appointing a Supreme Court Judge who was born and raised in the projects of the Bronx and telling Americans, “See you could have succeeded too if you had big dreams!”, It is not about exporting jobs to third world ghettos, it is not about telling the average American the American multi-nationals can only afford to pay peanuts if they are to compete in the global marketplace; it is about what the true values of a Judeo-Christian society should be all about and stand for. In the corporate world of America, corporate governance should have their priorities in this order:
1) Employees come first.
2) Customers come second
3) Profits third
4) Growth fourth
5) And the bottom of the rung shareholders (the gamblers) last
For the past twenty-five years it has been the other way around. Led firstly by corporate raiders like Carl Icahn, Frank Lorenzo (the guy who destroyed Continental and Eastern Airlines) Ivan Boesky, Henry Kravis, Michael Milken et all in the eighties, then followed by those low-life bottom fish dweller Hedge Fund managers such as Lloyd Blankfein (Goldman Sachs), George Soros, T Boone Pickens and numerous other filthy manipulators who prefer to work anonymously in their bunkers under the radar screen. And of course not forgetting all those investment banks which actually funded it all (including sub-prime mortgages) most of which have now disappeared or gone broke.
These gamblers and their Wall Street buddies originally started as green mailers (a predator who buys stock in companies, stirs the pot and makes threats to the existing directors in the hope the company finds a friendly investor to take the raider out at a premium price), then outright buyers (mainly through 100% debt financing) taking companies private, stripping them of all assets and then refloating them. And lastly over the past ten years shorting (selling stock they don’t own but “borrow”) thereby driving the price down and buying back those shares profiting by the depressed prices created. What good have these people done but to destroy good companies that gainfully employed good Americans? I don’t want to hear about the stockholder of a public corporation as the raison d’etre. A buyer of stock is no different from a gambler who takes his fortune to Vegas to play cards.
Once upon a time life assurance companies handled retirement plans and with that income they were builders/developers of large commercial and industrial properties and it was the rental income plus capital appreciation which provided the cash flow to pay out the pensioners. Then they faced competition and today the biggest gamblers and stockholders of the lot are the various pension funds aided and abetted by Wall Street. Isn’t a shame that things didn’t stay as they were? Most of us with 401K plans have been wiped out by the stock market crash! For me, if President Obama doesn’t stop sucking up to the very bastards that have destroyed our nation and starts rebuilding America with the core values which affords all Americans the lifestyle they used to enjoy, then history will show he was no better than George Dubbya, the worst President in modern history and the man who single handedly allowed for and created the environment for America’s demise as the nation the world envied and looked up to.
Call me a Marxist/Socialist deadbeat if you like, but right now I am having the last laugh. Capitalism has collapsed and Bernanke can print as many dollar bills as he likes and it will only lead to inflation only experienced by banana republics such as Zimbabwe. What is needed is the system turned upside down where people come first and not these narcissistic, selfish thugs continuing on their raping and pillaging rampage hell bent only on destroying our once great nation.
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