Tuesday, November 22, 2011

How much is too much?

Greetings good citizen,

Alternet provided an interesting story this morning about Wall Street’s other (maybe only) useful purpose, that of political ‘whip’ used to beat its bought and paid for politicians with.

Which is, as you might suspect, something of a contradiction. It only makes sense when taken in the context of providing ‘cover’ for those politicians, who can use the market’s performance in defense of the indefensible…

Otherwise the only thing the NYSE tells us is how rich the already wealthy are making themselves.

Which, bizarrely, leads to this sort of behavior:

When Pfizer cut its research budget this year and laid off 1,100 employees, it was not because the company needed to save money.

In fact, the drug maker had so much cash left over, it decided to buy back an additional $5 billion worth of stock on top of the $4 billion already earmarked for repurchases in 2011 and beyond.

The moves, announced on the same day, might seem at odds with each other, but they represent an increasingly common pattern among American corporations, which are sitting on record amounts of cash but insist that growth opportunities are hard to find.

There are not one but two interesting stories here.

The first is in the already mentioned ‘usefulness’ of the stock markets as an instrument of blackmail and the second is the rather fuzzy notion that there’s no way to ‘expand’ the economy (profitably.)

If we remove the ‘puts a buck in my pocket’ qualifier, there is suddenly a whole galaxy of things that need doing, isn’t there?

Yet fucktarded ‘for (personal) profit’ enterprise dictates you can’t do anything that doesn’t put a buck in your pocket…and the more that goes in your pocket, the better…for you…‘the job creator.’

Believe me good citizen, there is NO SHORTAGE of things that ‘need doing’.

But 'for profit' enterprises ROUTINELY dismiss productive workers (usually replaced [later] with less costly workers elsewhere) during the cost reduction phase of production enhancement operations.

What the 1% likes to pretend is that this ’cost reducing’ ISN’T constant.

It is both constant and unrelenting and soon to stop dead in its tracks…because almost ALL cost savings are ‘energy intensive’.

Humans replaced by machines require energy…oftentimes more energy than their human counterpart required. (The payback was strictly in terms of salary, not energy savings.)

Understand, ‘cutting’ the labor force and using the ‘savings’ to buy back shares is tied directly to executive compensation plans which are often tied directly to share prices.

No irony should be lost on the fact that SOME CEO’s spent MORE THAN the company earned buying back their own stock because of this seriously misguided incentive.

So why do personnel departments around the world regularly commit genocide so a few can be rich?

Just the way the dirty rotten game is played I suppose.

I mean, throwing someone out on the streets these day’s is akin to sentencing them (and their families) to death, so vast has the economic wasteland become!

But no, all is well in 1% land! (and as I have stated before, this gives the other 19% a free pass they don’t deserve!)

More damning is how the 1% possess 40% of ALL the wealth out there AND NOT ONE OF THEM DESERVES IT!

WHY do these people (foolishly) pay themselves more than they can spend?

The sad answer is solely SO YOU WON’T GET IT! FORCING you to comply with onerous working conditions while increasing THEIR wealth!

In this respect the 1% are ‘DERANGED’ and need to be, er, ‘removed’ from positions of economic responsibility.

Seriously good citizen, the flaw lies in an education system that teaches ignorance.

One can’t help but see it in the advertisements of ‘for profit’ education!

How misguided are the incentives in our civilization?
Sadly, they are deeply skewed…and Wall Street is the poster child for these disturbing excesses.

How did we get here? Mis-information, disseminated by a for profit education system.

You see, good citizen, most of you forget that most institutions of ‘higher education’ are ‘for profit’ institutions, which ‘taints’ their point of view…as exemplified by the current Penn State controversy.

Monstrous child abuse ‘covered-up’ to protect the all important ‘reputation’ of the school.

Is this the kind of world YOU want to live in good citizen?

Just something else to think about as the ‘Season of Peace’ begins…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

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