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February 03, 2007
Executives Raid the Til at Ford
I have read where Ford lost nearly 13 billion dollars last year are contemplating giving executives bonuses while slashing their workforce even further. First of all, the fact that their work force is 25% percent of what it was, their revenues have declined dramatically, and their market capitalization(total shares of public stock X the current price) make Ford a smaller scale manufacturer. There are like a Nissan. They have cut wages and want more cuts, big time cuts while at the same time paying their executives bonuses, supposedly to stay on at Ford. The reality is they aren't swimming with the big boys anymore. They acknowledge this by insisting on pay cuts to their workforce, but their Directors and Executives are delusional and want to believe that somehow they, the executives are still in the big game. The fat executives have already seen enormous jumps in their livelihood with that huge Bush tax cut, and the lowering of capital gains taxes which effect the majority of their income which is derived from stock options. Another no insignificant factor is that these lying deceitful corporate fat cats own the vast majority of the outstanding stock that has declined so much in value thus the fat asses have seen their net worth drop significantly and the bonuses are a way to recoup a little of what the stock market saw fit, most accurately, to take away from them. This is a sad example of the thieves trying desperately to retain the money machine that has kept them fat instead of focusing on the business and sacrificing and doing what it takes to make the business an honest industry, one in which executives and employees alike can be proud.
We are in a new age of the Robber Barons. But corporate America today makes the railroad barons and JP Morgan look like impish miscreants. It is noteworthy that John D. Rockefeller was villified in his day for the ruthless crushing of all competition and monopolizing industry, all the while as a good little Puritan deacon of his church. And spreading propaganda through the newspapers about the need for competition, i.e. a capitalist business climate, when the reality is competition is dead. It died with the Agrarian society before the Civil War. Ever since, the most diabolic and cunning, manipulative mother fuckers and their sons have continued to influence the politics and churches to spread their horseshit about not being lazy, and to be steadfast in order to whip the commoner into shape and keep making money for the wealthy sons of bitches who own the vast, vast majority of stock holdings. Rockefeller's family owns the lion's share of ExxonMobil, and they held a huge stake in Mobil. That was a deal that eliminated competition and made the Rockefeller family even richer. J.D. Rockefeller is cheering from the depths of hell over that coup.
The legislation that is currently being considered in Congress right now regarding CEO pay, and the horseshit rhetoric of George W. Bush about making a CEO's pay contingent on a vote of stockholders is a perfect example of the total corruption of politics by the business world. The average person listening to this bullshit would think, "why not"? But the truth is that it amounts to the CEO's and executives voting for their own pay raises, just as in Congress. Most CEO's and executives own the lion's share of their company's stock. Most of the rest of the stock is owned by managed funds whose job is primarily to keep pushing up the price of company's stock. The managed funds shy away from a stock as poor as Ford's so they have to make up for their loss of net worth by stealing it from the company funds via executive bonuses.
I don't see how there will ever be a change to a shared economic system that is beneficial to all Americans. Too many people are drunk with the system we are in and are too lethargic to make change. The wealthy have so entrenched their rhetoric and class division through the media, the schools and the churches for nearly the entire hisory of our nation that it doesn't appear that many people can fathom living in a different type of society where there isn't class warfare.
