Mind you, while the usual suspects are dithering about unemployment, threatening to not extend unemployment benefits, and screaming about the deficit while trying to extend tax cuts for the rich, this is going on:
U.S. companies’ profits rose in the third quarter to an annual rate of $1.66 trillion, the highest on record, reflecting the divergence between the recovery for the corporate sector and American households.
After-tax earnings rose by 3.2%, compared with the second quarter’s gain of 0.9%, the Commerce Department said Tuesday. Year over year, profits were 28.2% higher, as companies increased sales while keeping labor costs down.
The corporate-profit figures, which aren’t adjusted for inflation, accompanied the government’s latest estimate for overall economic growth in the third quarter. The U.S. economy expanded at a faster pace than previously thought during the quarter, in part because of stronger consumer spending and exports.
But growth remained too weak to cut the high unemployment rate.
No it didn’t. Lower unemployment would have cut into corporate profits. This wasn’t just dumb luck.
General Stuck
Maybe the Oligarchy will bloom in time for spring.
beltane
Maybe these corporations have become self-sustaining ecosystems that no longer require employees or customers.
If we had any lefty firebrands in this country the sh*t would be hitting the fan right about now.
MAJeff
As the old Pace Picante Sauce commercials used to say:
git a rope.
El Cid
It’s only because they have to work so hard to make all their money now because Obama’s and Chris Dodd’s super-soshullist Pol Pot financial regulations will soon prevent them from making any money at all.
jcricket
I think the idea is that if we eliminate all taxes for the rich and corporations, the economy will do super-awesome the best for our overlords and eventually we’ll all benefit from this, somehow, through magic and ponies.
And if we don’t benefit? Well, it’s our fault for being poor, or getting sick, or not being born a Galtian overlord anyway.
jacy
Pay no attention to the men behind the curtain.
Derelict
@jcricket:
Don’t forget–we must also eliminate the minimum wage and other excessive regulation that hobbles our industry.
America’s workers need to be free to compete effectively with 10-cent-a-day Vietnamese workers!
Nick
When I said corporations were sitting on profits purposely to foster high unemployment to kill the Democratic agenda, you all fucking laughed at me.
Laugh at this.
General Stuck
A rising tide lifts all corporate yachts.
Suffern ace
Well there is all that money circulating and it has to stop somewhere. It certainly hasn’t been stopping in my house.
Zifnab
Hurray! You win! You have collected all of the paper notes with dead Presidents on them!
At a certain point, one does question the value of a dollar if only the top 1% of the country is in possession of US Currency. At what point are we all just trading in Company Scrip?
MikeJ
Would it practical to just set up a guillotine at say, Westhampton and use it on people coming in for the weekend?
El Cid
You selfish little shits.
You clearly do not realize that their success is our success and their glory is our glory.
No, not in the sense that we money grubbing jerks will make money when they do or gain praise or respect when they do.
It means that these successful businesses are our champions, our warriors, and like any good society we should be more than happy to sacrifice and keep sacrificing our shallow material wealth connected to this flimsy world if it means that those showing glory in our names can gain even the smallest bit more respect for our betters.
Who here would choose a tiny bit of more money or food for their family, an hour or two off of work, some petty illness addressed, if it meant that for one minute our business champions looked weaker to the rest of the world?
If we remain committed to the shallowest material matters of this realm while corrupting our souls, we ensure that those above us whose names will be preserved in history, unlike the rest of us who merit not a cuneiform scratch, shall be remembered not for failure, not for weakness, but for the shining brightness of their conquests.
GregB
In related news Soylent Green stocks have reached an all time high/
Emerald
@beltane:
They’re all busy throwing toilet paper at Obama. They’ve got no time to worry about this kind of thing.
‘Cause getting rid of Obama, doncha know, will solve all these problems anyway.
Emerald
@Zifnab:
St. Peter doncha call me ’cause I can’t go. I owe my soul to the company store.
Napoleon
But Tiabbi said “fuck” about CEOs.
Judas Escargot
@GregB:
I’m starting to get Bullish on guillotines, myself.
Francie
Once again the middle class is screwed over and over again,
not surprised, when will folks wake the hell up!
Alex S.
Adam Smith said that profits of corporations grow when a country gets poorer because people are willing to work for less and goods are getting scarce. As an example of a rich country of the 18th century he mentioned China, not because a few corporations or lords were extremely rich, but because goods, especially food, was abundant.
Bob Loblaw
@Nick:
Did they all decide on that at the annual Chamber of Commerce’s Secret Conspiratorial Squad luncheon, or did they go upscale and put the plan together at the Bilderberg meeting instead? I would have thought owning every significant media property in the country and being able to lobby and donate endlessly would have been enough for them, but self-sabotage? That’s some real dedication…
It seems weird to me that such an expert on economic matters like yourself would be completely oblivious to productivity gains vis a vis labor needs and the importance of emerging markets, but then again given your political expertise I’m not surprised.
Contrary to Nick’s delusions that everything in the world is all about American politics, it’s a simple matter of fact that the average middle class American worker is expensive and increasingly obsolete in a global, mechanized, financialized economy with the amount of leakage and misallocated capital that this one has.
jl
Why not? What says you can’t make money in bad times?
This is what happens when faced with large levels of uncertainty about the level of demand, the firm’s strategy to maximize profit emphasizes reducing output more than prices. This is a rational profit making strategy. It also leads to Keynesian type phenomena on aggregate markets, and justifies Keynesian solutions, if increasing output, or employment, or both. Joseph Stiglitz and Bruce Greenwald wrote the pioneering papers on this behavior about twenty years ago.
I remember reading an interesting economics book,
Lawlessness and Economics: Alternative Modes of Governance, by Avinash K. Dixit.
Part of that book deals with what happens to employment and output in an economy of near complete anarchy. For example, a firm has to invest substantial resources in protecting its own property, since the state will not provide that service. It’s been a long time since I read that book, and some of what has been going on with the mortgage fraud and foreclosure crisis, intellectual property law, and our new hyper rent seeking patents system reminds me of that book.
Dixit draws lots of examples from the mob, and what happens when a few mobs take over an economy.
So, I am not outraged, I am curious about it, and look towards hours of enlightening study, and tediously delightful statistical analysis.
Until I remember that I am one of the ‘lesser people’ and do not own an adequate capital (as Dickens might say) if I anything goes wrong and I have to survive this BS for any length of time.
gnomedad
OT, Here we go:
Angry Liberal shoots TV, has 15-hour stand off over Bristol Palin success on Dancing With Stars
General Stuck
@Emerald:
great old song, well done. Another day older and deeper in debt.
Lurking Canadian
If only Congress would reduce the crippling corporate income tax rate, maybe US corporations would not be struggling to stay afloat and then they could invest in good jobs for hardworking Americans.
Wait, 28% increase in profits? Hmm, that seems not to match what my Secret Supply Side Decoder Ring predicts. Your data must therefore be in error.
Nick
@Emerald: Not only that, but some of them aren’t even all that lefty.
Keith G
Severely off topic, maybe.
Goofing around with a friend, we were trying to use Google Street View to get a look at the main entrance of Macy’s on W34th NYC. Seems there is no street view of that entire block.
Does that happen often?
On topic, I have read essays claiming the huge death toll of the Great Potato Famine was due to a policy to withhold aid so that there would be a reduction in surplus labor and in tenant farmers who were an obstacle to opening up more land to grazing – nascent version of “Disaster Capitalism”, if you will.
And now our native economic shocks can allow disaster capitalists to work their voodoo here – maximize profits by squeezing the labor force (and attacking regulation) in ways not recently imaginable.
Too much tinfoil?
Nick
@Bob Loblaw:
What self-sabotage? They’re scoring record profits. Pay attention…and keep mocking, the more I prove to be right, the funnier it is.
Emerald
@efgoldman: I was a bit younger, but ya never forget ol’ Tennessee Earnie Ford!
More:
Some people say a man is made out of mud
A poor man’s made out of muscle and blood.
Muscle and blood, skin and bone,
A mind that’s weak and a back that’s strong.
No doubt the view of our new nobility.
jl
Isn’t Cole supposed to be playing some mass interactive community internet death cribbage or something?
DonkeyKong
Large Man with Dead Body: Who’s that then?
The Dead Collector: I dunno, must be a king.
Large Man with Dead Body: Why?
The Dead Collector: He hasn’t got shit all over him.
Dennis SGMM
U.S. companies to U.S. workers: “We’re soooooo over you!”
Emerald
@DonkeyKong: Winner!
El Cid
@Emerald:
In the latest “Fuck It, Why Don’t We Stop Prolonging The Complete Collapse of This Stupid-Ass Country and Throw It Down the God-Damned Drain Once and For All and Finally Be Done With It” news, this from McClatchy DC:
It doesn’t have to be Sarah God-Damned Palin in order for a Republican President to administer the killing shot.
In sane land, McClatchy reports this, which simply won’t be heard in our stupid ass media and talking head punditariat because America Spoke And Said They Hated Democrats And Spending And The Deficit And The Inflation.
Dennis SGMM
@Bob Loblaw:
It’s too bad that you aren’t there to advise the Germans. They’re naive enough to pay high wages, provide excellent benefits and they’re still the world’s second-largest exporter. You should shoot over there and wise them up.
Oscar Leroy
@Emerald:
“They’re all busy throwing toilet paper at Obama. They’ve got no time to worry about this kind of thing.”
Instead of pressuring the president–who owes his job to our votes–we should pressure corporate executives, who owe their jobs to not us. Is that what you’re saying?
Emerald
@El Cid: It’s 30 years of Republican (mostly) rule, who’s only real goal was to loot the country four ways from Sunday.
And they’ve done it.
And it’s all gonna get blamed on Obama, starting with the little adolescent snobs on our own damned side.
Bob Loblaw
@Nick:
Your charging that they’re deliberately passing up further profit-generating investments not because they’re economically unjustified, but because doing so discredits the political leadership instead.
If you have evidence that individual firms are not expanding operations and output directly against improving demand projections going forward, you should say so instead of being a sniveling gossip. In the mean time, I’d advise you to read jl’s post as he provides a very concise explanation of the corporate profit-taking behavior we’re seeing. You seem to think that profits are a unique phenomenon divorced from revenues and labor costs…
The problem isn’t that corporations are malicious, it’s that they aren’t, by and large. They are merely products of a larger system of values and opportunities, and thus much, much more dangerous.
Ash Can
Normally, I’d say that’s fine, hiring should be turning up soon (hiring always lags profit growth). And it still might, to some extent. The giant turd floating in the punchbowl, though, is offshoring. Job growth in the overseas operations is going to fuck our shit up here. But then, that’s the way the Republicans and their wealthy corporate buddies like it.
Odie Hugh Manatee
The obvious solution for these record profits are more tax breaks. These record profits prove the point that businesses are hanging on to their money because of the uncertain economic times we find ourselves in. It’s clear to me that these businesses need more money to ease their suffering. Let’s toss in more tax breaks for the rich while we are at it. If they get more money then I am sure that they will save it, thus giving banks more money to loan.
/brain explodes
Nick
@Bob Loblaw:
Yeah, because they’re raking in profits without them.
I see you missed all those times I pointed out that CEOs were saying just this on CNBC and Fox Business.
http://www.resistnet.com/forum/topics/why-ceos-cant-stand-obama
It’s telling Bob, that all you need to convince you that Obama is doing something wrong is an anonymous source on a blog, but when CEOs are purposely sabotaging the country, you need proof.
Very telling
El Cid
@Emerald: Yeah, I know, but sometimes when I’m bitter I tire of their inflicting of a slow sickness to death and think that our dumb asses should go ahead and let them finish us off real quick.
Nick
@Oscar Leroy:
Yes, because corporate executives would definitely still have a company without the freakin’ American workforce.
When it comes to employment, rich business owners owe us more than Obama does.
burnspbesq
@Nick:
I’m still laughing. Do you also believe that the 9/11 terrorists were working for the Trilateral Commission?
This is not the first recovery where employment was the last thing to recover. Sux, but it’s understandable. If demand looks soft going forward and your existing workforce can deal with what you’ve got on your plate, why hire?
Keith G
@Ash Can:
And quite a few Democrats as well.
Nick
@burnspbesq:
because demand doesn’t look soft going forward and your existing workforce CANNOT deal with what you’ve got on your plate.
James E. Powell
The last election cycle demonstrated that even if you allow Wall Street and the corporations dictate a large portion of the policy, they will still fund campaigns to destroy you because they don’t want their share or ten times their share, they want it all, all the time.
They are never going to stop going after social security. They want every single dollar of the education budgets. They do not want to pay any taxes for anything. They do not want any regulation that ties their hands with respect to their workers, the environment, or any other external costs imposed upon the public by their business activities. Oh yeah, and if they screw up and take the economy down, they want the government to bail them out.
So given that, why not take them on? Why not explain to all Americans that the government, as understood by the Democratic Party, is the only institution that can provide fairness and prevent abuses?
It is supposed to be our government, of the people, by the people, and for the people. If the government is the problem, then either we are the problem or it is not our government.
Emerald
@efgoldman: I just wish I could snap my fingers.
Never could.
Great to see that again! Now it’s really becoming an earworm.
Nick
@James E. Powell:
Because Americans don’t want fairness and abuses prevented, they want an unfair society and abuses, as long as they’re on the good side.
Suffern ace
@Nick: And those CEOs aren’t mindful of their core businesses and cost containment And risk management?
rageahol
I think the thing that puts this in context is to remember that once you get past a certain income level, really the only thing that motivates people to continue trying to make obscene amounts of money is positional goods. because it’s not like you have the time to spend it. there was a study a year or two ago that, as i recall, said the sweet spot for actual happiness is at about the 80k/year level, because any more and you have to actually start managing your money, which can become a time burden in and of itself, but you still have plenty for necessities and leisure.
these guys want to be listened to and acknowledged, because that’s how they judge their social rank at that income level.
it’s disgusting and depressing, but i think that’s the best explanation for this phenomenon. and it also suggests that so long as you put a bunch of them on nominal government advisory boards that you can ignore, you could jack up the marginal tax rate to Eisenhower levels and they wouldnt complain all that much.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Nick:
lolz
That is funny. Maybe you should stick to The Obama Doctrine: preemptively waging war against those who don’t recognize his status as Best President Ever.
Oh wait, you were doing that, weren’t you? lolz harder
Bob Loblaw
@Dennis SGMM:
That’s a political imposition that derives from a different set of social values, and no more an organic end state than what we have. There’s no reason why it wouldn’t work here, but that sort of change won’t be led by the corporations themselves. They aren’t going to rebuild the American middle class out of the goodness of their hearts, they’re going to go where the money is.
And obviously you didn’t realize that the blockquote was a conditional statement. You change the conditions towards greater social justice, you get better results for everybody. I’m indicting a system, not trying to convince people that Siemens is somehow a nicer bunch of people than GE.
Nick
@Suffern ace:
you think these people are rational and have common sense?
JGabriel
And yet the CEO’s are still whining that Democrats aren’t friendly enough?
This is what class war looks like.
.
Mike Kay (Democrat of the Century)
@Nick: I think these ceo’s are snorting too much cocaine, it’s making them paranoid, seeing black helicopters outside their corner offices.
Emerald
@El Cid: This country keeps voting for the Rs, that’s just what’s gonna happen.
If it hasn’t already.
Nick
@Just Some Fuckhead: What is your obsession with Obama? We’re not talking about him here, we’re talking about CEOs. Jeez, you guys are so allergic to the idea that Obama may not be the problem, you’re willing to excuse crooked CEOs, the same people you whine Obama is sucking up to, if it protects your narrative.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Nick: How about an Obama.. bully pulpit.. line? Those are funny!
Mike Kay (Democrat of the Century)
@rageahol:
This.
But this happens at all levels. Think of all the ego-driven bloggers who lash out because “he doesn’t listen to us.”
Nick
@Just Some Fuckhead: Dude, seek help, your Obama fetish is scary.
JGabriel
Test.
Restrung
@Nick:
Some people have what you and I would call a conscience or sense of shame for rapacious greed. Some of these people are successful and very rich CEOs. But capital has no soul. It’s a conundrum.
ETA: /amoral/ a local blogger’s take: http://thecuckingstool.blogspot.com/2010/11/capitalism-is-not-immoral.html
Bob Loblaw
@Nick:
1. None of those quotes say that CEOs are cutting output and withholding hiring decisions to force political upheaval in this country. In fact, they all seem to be talking about demand uncertainty instead. Odd. They are free to arrive at their demand projections by whatever dumbassed criteria they so desire, but “cutting costs” and “focusing on core businesses” during a recession isn’t exactly a stunning admission.
2. I would ask what “anonymous blog source” you’re referring to, exactly? Did they also say things out of step with your fevered and delusional readings of reality? My condolences. That’s obviously hard for you.
3. I can’t believe I’m with burnspesq on this one. That never happens.
Oh, what the hell, you got me. This is all bullshit. I just hate that uppity Negro President so much I can’t function. Let’s lynch him.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Nick: Good one, Nick! Here, I got that for ya..
Mike Kay (Democrat of the Century)
so the ceos hate obama, they also hated FDR.
so the populists hate obama, Huey Long also hated FDR.
Nick
@Bob Loblaw:
it is when you’re raking in record profits. You don’t need an economics degree to understand you cut costs and focus on core business when you’re struggling, not when you’re making record profits, that’s not a recession.
Pick any day when you jumped down the throat of anyone who dared question whether or not Obama is a sellout.
Davis X. Machina
It’s times like these that make me angry that what little domestic tumbrel-manufacturing capacity we ever had was offshored in the ’90s, although — and don’t tell me if I’m wrong, I don’t want to know — Ames makes damn fine pitchforks, and makes them domestically, in WVa, last time I looked.
Torches require no particular expertise to manufacture.
DFer
@Bob Loblaw:
Uh Bob
“hunkering down” because they’re afraid of “Obama’s latest great idea” sounds awfully like “we’re just going to screw everything until this guy stops doing things”
Teak111
10% unemployment is the new economy. Corps don’t need em, small business don’t need em.
Neutron Flux
@Just Some Fuckhead: Clever.
Teak111
work for a large high tech company, hiring 15+ Engs a week, not many are Amer. Corp employment is global, cheapest worker with the skills gets the gig. Wake up amer.
PurpleGirl
Tomorrow is my second anniversary of becoming unemployed. It’s not good. Not good at all. (NYS only went to Tier 3; no Tier 4 benefits.)
Bob Loblaw
@DFer:
It’s an antagonistic statement, there’s no denying it. There’s a political motive, but it’s public relations work. Those guys went on the record with an agenda, this isn’t exactly secret spycraft. Isn’t it more likely that they were lying a little to sell policy preferences, just as politicians do every day?
Are you seriously telling me that Verizon and the semiconductor industry are deliberately sabotaging the economy, of all people? Because, man oh man, would that be out of sorts with the vibrancy and success of the high tech sector of this economy compared to other sectors coming out of this recession. Frankly, your case is in shambles. I’d cut your losses.
@Nick:
You’re still not getting it. You can cut costs and streamline production (while maintaining stable price levels) to produce greater profit margins, even in a lower output environment. This isn’t alchemy, it’s Business 101. There is a difference between being a more profitable entity in the short term vs. a better positioned one for the long term, and vice versa, and both, and not at all. It’s fluid.
So, in other words, pass. Man, you sure nailed me there.
THE
I haven’t seen the article – WSJ is behind a paywall.
However my gut reaction is that, if there is a large divergence between corporate profitability and US GDP growth, then a possible explanation might be that the growth did not take place in the USA.
Asia was experiencing rapid growth during the sample period, so any US corporates with exposure to Asia would have had larger profits.
Exposure to Europe (other than Germany) or USA, not so much.
Ruckus
Have a friend that works at a union. Not a union worker, works at a union.
She said that most members have kept their jobs but the companies have cut hours to 24 from 40. Because under 25 hrs is considered part time by the contract and they don’t have to pay as much benefits.
This is in the food service industry. You know one of the last places people cut out completely, eating food. So the the workers are paid a lot less and supermarket is more profitable. So the worker has to find and work 2 jobs just to afford to eat at the market they work at. Henry Ford may have been a prick in a lot of ways but he understood you pay your workers enough to purchase the product they build or sell or soon no one will be able to purchase anything. Cutting costs is an admirable goal but not when it comes at the price of ruining the market for your product. You cut out unnecessary costs, the gold plated fixtures in the executive washroom, the original art in the lobby, not the means of production. Assholes.
burnspbesq
@Nick:
Feel free to keep talking out of your hindquarters. You have perfect knowledge of the demand forecasts and capacity utilization of EVERY COMPANY IN AMERICA? Why are you not sitting in Lloyd Blankfein’s chair?
burnspbesq
@Bob Loblaw:
Scary how some total douchebags can make perfect sense once in a while, innit?
burnspbesq
@DFer:
Has any actual CEO been quoted as saying that, or is it just Republican political operatives making shit up?
Martin
@THE: You’re confusing profits with revenues.
Revenues are only marginally up, but expenses are way down, so profits have soared. Laying off 10% of your workforce can do that. The problem now is that corporations have achieved a new profit margin stability with this lower workforce.
They need to be stressed. They need to be forced to expand revenues rather than cut expenses in order to grow profits. Expanding revenues requires investment, and investment means jobs.
And the current tax arrangement penalizes companies for hiring (payroll taxes, etc.) They need to be penalized for not hiring. Set the corporate tax rate as a function of profits per employee or something like that. Put employees in the denominator. Discourage contractors and automation if jobs is your goal.
burnspbesq
@Nick:
How about a little empirical evidence, Scarecrow?
http://www.bos.frb.org/news/speeches/rosengren/2010/010810/index.htm
Bob Loblaw
@burnspbesq:
Well, we can’t all be lily-white, SoCal tax lawyers who went to Duke, I’m afraid. Snicker.
I’ll try to keep my uncouth plebe sensibilities out of your way, my liege.
Nick
@burnspbesq:
HELLO!??!?
“
CEO of CYPRESS FUCKING SEMICONDUCTOR ECHOING PUBLIC COMMENTS FROM CEOS AT INTEL AND VERIZON.
Really, what more proof do you need?
Nick
@burnspbesq:
No, why, do you?
What I do have is the knowledge of CEOs who FLAT OUT SAID they could hire, but won’t, because they want to stop Obama’s agenda. I even showed you, and you STILL ignored it.
Bob Loblaw
Nick, seriously dude, go look up the recent quarterly statements of Cypress Semiconductor and their future guidance, and then tell us what low-down saboteurs they’re being…
CEOs lying through their teeth in the Journal, what’s this world coming to?
El Cid
Dean Baker on Ireland’s Argentina option.
Argentina ain’t perfect, but thank god it’s not destroying its economy in order to prioritize paying profitable interest to the IMF and investors so that it could continue to crush its people with “austerity”.
In Africa in the 1980s, these Western lender imposed economic and budget programs were called “Structural Adjustment Programs”. In Latin America, they were called “Austerity”.
RalfW
Bob Loblaw said:
You mean the amount of leakage caused by eating WOW chips with Olestra?
You remember, that efficient capitalist paradise of slimmer waists and anal leakage?
A Thousand Faces
Burnspbesq and Bob Loblaw are beyond thick and I wager suffer from exactly the same psychosis as the CEOs they mean to excuse. Being a law student, they are precisely the type of douchebags I’m surrounded by who defend and envy the “meritocratic” winners that they see themselves as.
I took a course this semester with speakers every week from very high up the food chain. Fortune 500 CEOs, chairman of the US Chamber of Commerce, etc. And let there be no mistake, they are VERY driven by political ideology. Whether a calculated decision or based on a misguided ZOMG!!11! Obama is a sockalist they are, on a daily basis, making decisions with politics in mind. And for you two numbskulls to sit here and defend their decisions as just the rational and super intelligent machinations of business titans is LAUGHABLE. They are narcissistic assholes. Ten percent have a clue. They have no special abilities or intelligence, but they truly believe they have “won” b/c they are better. They ALL think they’re special little snowflakes. They are prone to exactly the same fears and clouded judgment that every human has. I personally grilled a Goldman Sachs President who had the fucking balls to tell me that the economic implosion was due to Fannie and Freddie being forced by Democrats to give loans to poor people. THOSE are the fucking people who are making these rational decisions projecting demand and deciding on hiring.
So please, pretty please save your bullshit exaltation of these men, automatically and wisely pouring over the data to come to the “best” decision. That’s not what’s happening and that’s not who they are. They are, by and large, every bit as clueless and ego driven as anyone here would dare to imagine and then some.
Bob Loblaw
@A Thousand Faces:
Exultation? Seriously?
So describing corporations and their executives as dangerous liars who hurt this country and its workers, and are against the cause of social justice as a whole wasn’t good enough for you? Because that’s what I did, in like four consecutive posts.
But yeah, I also said that there is purely economic logic in slashing labor costs at a time when productivity keeps rising even during a recession, thus producing the sizable profits that have everybody in such consternation. I guess that makes me an objectivist now. For reals. Way to seriously engage.
A Thousand Faces
@Bob Loblaw:
I see one post where you implied that they might be spinning for political gain, which doesn’t speak at all to their underlying actions. The rest is you defending what they’re doing as mere application of business principles. I’m telling you, from firsthand knowledge and experience that that isn’t the case. So on one hand I have your contrarian opinion, based on your contrarianness and desire to believe that the world is an ordered meritocracy. On the other I have facts and my own experience. These men are driven by ego, vengeance, perceived persecution, and their own personal gain. They don’t give a fuck about Business 101. And if you talked to any of them for more than 10 minutes you’d probably understand that.
Bob Loblaw
@A Thousand Faces:
Gee, calling them “dumbassed” (post #69) and “liars” (post #79) sure does sound respectful to our meritocratic overlords. You got me.
Business 101 is cutting costs. You do it when times are good, you do more of it when times are bad. It’s ingrained, and it works. These fuckers look to downsize even when revenues are growing at a record pace. That’s one of the reasons why I accused them of seeking to destroy the American middle class. And they get away with it because they don’t need the American consumer quite as much as they used to even though the American worker is more productive than ever for them. It’s not an equitable relationship. So it goes.
There’s a Ctrl-F function. Use it, and stop misrepresenting what I wrote.
bjacques
Clearly someone is putting those Founders College diplomas to good use. The College failed only because it was redundant.
Paul in KY
@Nick: I ain’t laughing.
Paul in KY
@A Thousand Faces: That’s my take on them too. Also.
liberal
@burnspbesq:
It’s hard to miss when you’re
shooting fish in a barreldebating Nick, who claimed a couple months ago that part of the aftermath of the bubble burst in Japan was high inflation.xian
worst thread ever