Emma Berry

Archive for the ‘Wall Street’ Category

The 17th Annual Executive Excess Study finds that the CEOs who laid off the most employees are also the ones who were paid the highest salaries.

There is little correlation between Wall Street and Main Street–a reality that the majority of our elected officials in Washington appear to be determined to ignore.  Anything for the bottom line.  Anything for making sure that the shareholders are paid the highest quarterly dividends possible.

Please remember that 85% of the American people do not own one dime of Wall Street stock.  Please keep in mind that 85% of us live on Main Street.  Please connect the dots and start voting accordingly.

Not only do Wall Street corporations fire employees right and left, they will shut down entire factories that may even be making a profit and fire all of those employees, sell off all the assets and reinvest that money elsewhere–often not even in this country.  Thus communities–often communities that bent over and touched their toes for these greedy pigs by raising property taxes on the citizen of their own communities so these corporate pigs could enjoy tax-free land–are left holding the bag of high unemployment and property values that fall through the floor.  Gee thanks Chamber of Commerce for your collusion with these crooks.  And we can thank a lot of city council members along with the Chamber of commerce for selling out their communities to Wall Street.  Of course, some states like Texas, with incompetent idiots like Rick Perry driving the bus, do it on a state wide basis.  Gee thanks Rick for robbing the citizens unemployment insurance coffers so you can get campaign funds by buying off Wall Street corporations like Bank of America.

Michael Duke of Wal-Mart
Total Compensation 2009: $19,234,269
Announced Annual Layoffs (11/1/08-4/1/10): 13,350

Randall Stephenson AT&T
Total Compensation 2009: $20,244,312
Announced Annual Layoffs (11/1/08-4/1/10): 12,300

TO SEE THE TOP TEN

Not all cultures are as easily manipulated by the  buy buy buy messages of Madison Avenue as are Americans.

Looks to me like the globalization scheme may be unraveling.

Other cultures do not have that “there’s more where that came from” optimism that permeates the American culture.   Other cultures have for generations had to make do with limited resources.  We have a history of using up the resources of one area and then moving on to a new frontier.

“.  .   .  Wall Street corporation  are increasingly counting on China to deliver growth not available elsewhere, but the country’s consumers remain reluctant to boost their domestic spending, according to a survey of consumer attitudes published by the Economist Intelligence Unit.

“Chinese consumers, both urban and rural, although optimistic about the future, remain big savers and cautious spenders, despite their government’s concerted effort to stimulate domestic demand,” the EIU said on Friday.

In spite of a Rmb4,000bn ($589bn) stimulus package, targeted tax breaks and other incentives to boost sales of cars and appliances in rural areas last year, “concerns about healthcare, education and retirement continue to restrain consumption”.Rural Chinese remain frugal when it comes to spending on items from white goods to cars, because they are focused on providing their own safety net for health costs and retirement, the survey found. .  .  ”    More in FINANCIAL TIMES.

BECAUSE THEY HAVE BEEN TOO BUSY CREATING JOBS OVERSEAS–THAT’S WHY!

Unfortunately, new data out from the Commerce Dept. is no surprise.

Corporations that are moaning about being unable to help out with the unemployment crisis in this nation–in which more than 26 million of America’s workers are unemployed or underemployed–can sure find ways to create jobs overseas.

In 2008 Parent companies cut a total of 445,500 jobs here in the good ole USA, while their foreign affiliates added 111,700 jobs.

Another 131,000 jobs were lost in July, and the U.S. unemployment rate remained at 9.5 percent, as in June. The new data out this morning from the Department of Labor reflects a lack of private-sector hiring and large numbers of jobless workers returning to the market.

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DON’T YOU THINK IT’S ABOUT TIME THAT WE TAKE BACK OUR GOVERNMENT HANDOUT TO THESE PIGS AND START USING IT TO CREATE JOBS HERE IN THE USA? AND TO SOLVE SOME OF OUR SOCIO-ECONOMIC PROBLEMS LIKE ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION!

We can start by taking back $18.5 billion of our annual give-away of “farm subsidies” to Wall Street agribusiness crooks like Archer Daniel Midland.  We’ll leave a billion in that fund for real American farmers who still live on the land they farm.

I hope that those who call themselves “conservatives” and have railed against Senator Sanders as a “communist” will take note that without Bernie, this  historic provision would NEVER have been included.

WALL STREET REFORM BILL SENT TO THE PRESIDENT

Congress Passes Wall Street Reform Responding to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, the Senate on Thursday passed legislation to rein in some of the worst abuses by Wall Street.  The measure includes an historic provision by Bernie to audit the Federal Reserve and lift the veil of secrecy at that enormously powerful agency.   He called the overall legislation a “positive step forward” but said that much more has to be done to end the greed and recklessness by the Wall Street financiers responsible for the worst economic collapse since the 1930s.  To read more, click here.

End Fed Secrecy The measure makes the central bank divulge the identities of financial institutions that took more than $2 trillion in nearly zero-interest loans or loan guarantees. Bernie has pushed for full disclosure since they day Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke adamantly refused to tell him  the names of the banks that took the loans. The information must be made public by Dec. 1. The bill directs the Government Accountability Office to review all emergency actions by the central bank since the start of the financial crisis in 2007. The GAO also will investigate apparent conflicts of interest involving the Fed and CEOs of the largest financial institutions in the country. For details on Bernie’s provision, click here.

Credit Cards and Big Banks Bernie faulted the legislation for not breaking up banks deemed “too big to fail.” Incredibly, three of the four biggest banks in the country are larger today than they were before taxpayers bailed them out. Sanders also wanted the bill to impose a cap on runaway credit card interest rates. Senators rejected an even more modest proposal to let states enforce their own usury laws.  For a summary of what’s in the financial overhaul bill, the good and the bad, click here.

A Meeting of the Minds at the Wall Street Trough

I just read an article in the July issue of Harpers by Frederick Kaufman titled:  THE FOOD BUBBLE – How Wall Street Starved Millions and got Away with It.

These people are so evil and thoroughly corrupted to the bone that the scary part about it is that I honestly think they don’t even realize that what that are doing is evil.  If they do, then they are even worse because they obviously don’t give a damn about the majority of people who inhabit this planet.

Beginning in 1991 Goldman Sach’s analysts went about transforming food into a financial concept.  Their crap which monetized cattle, coffee, cocoa, corn, hogs and a variety or two of wheat came to be known as the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index.  Next step they began to offer shares. No one was surprised in the first quarter of 2008 Cargill attributed is 86 percent jump in annual profits to commodity trading.  And no one was surprised when packaged food maker ConAgra sold its trading arm to a hedge fund for $2.8 billion.  Nor when The Economist announced that the real price of food had reached its highest level since 1845.

Goldman’s Sachs created this speculative frenzy that sparked riots in more than 30 countries and drove the number of the world’s “food insecure” to more than a billion.  The worldwide price of food rose by 80 percent between 2005 and 2008—thanks to Goldman Sachs.  Even the USA was not insulated from this shenanigan.  49 million Americans found themselves unable to put a full meal on the table.  Like all of their speculative bubbles, the food bubble burst too.  The wheat harvest of 2008 turned to to be the most bountiful the world had ever seen, so plentiful that even as hundreds of millions slowly starved, 200 million bushels were sold for animal feed.  Livestock owners could afford the wheat, poor people could not.  657 million bushels of 2008 wheat remained in  US silos after the buying season.  Once this oversupply was discovered, grain prices plummeted but that only changed the picture for investors—not the hungry people of the world.

SO MY ADVICE:

KEEP YOUR PANTS ON.  WHO KNOWS WHAT THING NEXT THAT MR. LLOYD BLANKFEIN OR ONE OF HIS MANY MINIONS WILL DECIDE IS WORTH MONETIZING. But whatever it is you can bet that the 263 multimillionaires in Congress –Republicans and Democrats alike will vote for it.

Emma

WHO CARED?  CERTAINLY NOT BP–NOR ITS INVESTORS EITHER, UNTIL BP STARTED LOSING MONEY.

Who cared among Bernie Madoff’s investors?  Did they give a damn about how those dividends were magically coming to them every quarter?  Did any one of them look to see how that money was being made? Apparently not because Bernie Madoff ran his ponzi for almost 20 years.  If any investor questioned it, they kept their mouths shut and kept raking in the dough from the latest suckers.

Ever since 8 years of the George Bush fiasco, those on the right have been insisting that Americans downplay not only the acts of his criminal administration, but also any Wall Street corporate acts of negligence.  We hear such admonitions as–”Doesn’t change things to blame.  It’s not nice to blame.  It’s time to move on. etc.”  We’ve all heard variations of this from the right beginning with the presidential campaign of 2008 and continuing up through today.

Well another word for blame is accountability.  Essentially what many of these people are really saying is:  “Don’t hold Wall Street and their rich investors accountable for taking risk with the lives and safety of workers and our environment.  After all, what is more sacred than their quarterly dividends?”

I say blame blame blame and continue blaming and embarrassing these greedy pigs until laws are in place to protect the public from the unchecked greed of rich Wall Street investors.   AND YES, I BLAME INVESTORS EQUALLY WITH THOSE WHO RUN WALL STREET.  They don’ t have to invest in companies like BP.  They have other choices.  They can invest locally where they can see what is being done with their investments.

Globalization is just another way to assist investors in being irresponsible.  Do you think that most of them give a damn about what is being done to put that dividend check in their mail box every quarter?  I don’t.

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Congressional investigators have identified several mistakes by BP in the weeks leading up to the disaster as it fell way behind on drilling the well.  Here is but one of them:

10 HOURS OF EXTRA TIME TO MAKE THE WELL SAFE WAS TOO MUCH FOR BP–”Who cares,” they said.  “Job is done.  End of story.”

BP also apparently rejected advice of a subcontractor, Halliburton Inc., in preparing for a cementing job to close up the well. BP rejected Halliburton’s recommendation to use 21 “centralizers” to make sure the casing ran down the center of the well bore. Instead, BP used six centralizers.

In an e-mail on April 16, a BP official involved in the decision explained: “It will take 10 hours to install them. I do not like this.” Later that day, another official recognized the risks of proceeding with insufficient centralizers but commented: “Who cares, it’s done, end of story, will probably be fine.”

BP Shares have now lost  more than a third of their value. Is BP already a too-big-to-fail beached whale who will be bought and taken apart piece by piece with its assets sold to the highest bidder?

Instead of worrying about the survival of their CEO or whether they will have to cut the amount of dividends that they pay out to their shareholders, after the failure of their latest attempt to block the oil leak, BP’s worries are much more basic–they now worry about the survival of the corporation.  With the fall of the value of their stock BP, a company that just a few months ago had a DAILY PROFIT of $61 million dollars is now a takeover target.

Tony Hayward may very well get the ax if this happens.

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EMMA’S COMMENTS

Perhaps this is what the conservatives mean when they speak of “the market adjusting itself.”

Perhaps some of the rich Wall Street investors are getting a heart and selling their stock because they don’t want to be associated with BP?  Not likely. It’s more like they are jumping off the deck of a sinking ship to save their own greedy asses.

All these too-big to fail Wall Street corporations need to remember that all the too big to fail dinosaurs are now in a tar pit somewhere.

Being fair and just to the others and to the environment is not a strategy that large corporations should follow for PR reasons.  It is a strategy that they should follow for their own damn survival because they live and breathe in this world too.  Their shareholders should remember that as well and think of their children and grandchildren.

Until the actions of Corporations are taken personally by the majority of people, nothing will change.  Until the majority of people can feel the pain of the Louisiana fishermen, nothing of any substance will change.  We will continue to relive the impact of the irresponsible greed of Wall Street AND those who invest in it.

We need to remember that without the investors approval, BP would never have been able to do what it did.

ALL AMERICANS WHO HAVE STOCK PORTFOLIOS NEED TO SERIOUSLY TAKE A LOOK AT WHAT IT TAKES TO GET THOSE DIVIDEND CHECKS IN THEIR MAILBOXES EVERY QUARTER.

The nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics has calculated that more than 151 members of Congress have up to $195 million invested in major defense contractors that are earning profits from the US military occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

When General David Petraeus, the top US military officer in Iraq, went to Capitol Hill to brief Congress in April of 2008, he was addressing lawmakers who had a lot more than just a political stake in the Iraq occupation. Along with their colleagues in the House and Senate, the politicians who got a status report from the general and the US ambassador to Iraq had millions of dollars of their own money invested in companies doing business with the Department of Defense (DoD).

In 2006, the investment portfolios of 151 current members—more than a quarter of Congress—had between $78.7 million and $195.5 million invested in companies that received major defense contracts (over $5 million). The portfolios include holdings in companies paid billions of dollars each month to support America’s military. These companies provided almost everything the military uses, from aircraft and weapons to medical supplies and soft drinks.

Why hasn’t the government launched a criminal investigation into BP? That’s the question several former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials have been asking in the aftermath of the catastrophic explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig last month that killed 11 employees and ruptured a newly drilled well 5,000 feet below the surface that has spewed tens of millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf if Mexico. Like previous BP-related disasters in Alaska and Texas, evidence has emerged that shows BP knowingly cut corners on maintenance and safety on Deepwater Horizon, which,  could amount to criminal violations of the Clean Water Act.  MORE

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EMMA’S COMMENTS

Clean Water Act?  Why don’t we start with the deaths of  the men that directly resulted from BP’s negligence in following safety rules that would have protected these people.

And while we are at it, you can add Massey Mining to the same list on the same charges.

Both Don Blankenship AND Tony Hayward should be in jail right now pending trial for negligent homicide.

Negligent homicide is a criminal charge brought against people who, through criminal negligence, allow others to die.