Wednesday, January 14, 2009

America's Greedy Sickness

Article about Yahoo's new CEO:

Shareholders are looking for Yahoo to rekindle talks with Microsoft Corp. or possibly sell off assets -- anything that earns them a quick return. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said as recently as last week that he’s still open to a partnership with Yahoo, something that may be first on investors’ agenda.

Does anyone here ask real questions?

Like viability? or long-term growth? or purpose? Quality?

Apparently not. Let's just gear up merger talks, drive up the stock price, so we can sell and make a killing.

Is this not the final disease? The unrelenting greed of hedge funds and brokers - Medoff or the poor guy who just recently faked his own death via a plane crash? Who's "pretty wife" is now suing him for divorce, who's multiple companies are being investigate for fraud, and so on and so forth.

Should Yahoo survive? I don't know, but the heart of this article is everything that's wrong with American industry and business right now.

Prosperity is not about bottom line or quick profits. Never has been, but Wall Street has gone crazy - a game played by 30-something ninnies who know little about the world in which they live, who can see no further than their own bottom line, who play with people's money like they played with their action-adventure figures.

I'd love to see Yahoo tell 'em to take a hike and jump into the lake (naw, that would be pollution of the worst kind).

American business is no longer about enterprise and productivity, thanks to Wall Street and its unregulated madness.

And Americans themselves aren't a whole lot better off emotionally.

It was all spend and consume, and now we've got to pay the piper.

Have we learned anything?

I doubt if the Wall Street big boys have ... as they beg for more money from Uncle Sam so they can continue to pad their coffers and live lavishly on the government dole.

I hope and pray that Obama and Team will have the vision and the courage to shut down this insanity - install a whole new process of tight regulation, to force this nation onto a fiscally responsible path - for government and business.

We can do it; and I don't think we have any choice.

The war in Iraq and elsewhere has all been underwritten by China and Japan buying government securities ... is this the way to do business?

We have spent ourselves silly, on all fronts. But it's time to take a deep breath, redistribute the wealth - the upper crust doesn't need to be so thick, and the lower echelons need a little more.

Ah well ... let's see if we can do it!

2 comments:

  1. Yeah, I think that in many ways America is spiritually dead. It's all about impressing people and making more money, and less about real human lives.

    Le sigh ... obvsiously the guy who crashed his plane is mentally ill and probably will need treatment.

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  2. Tom, the questioning I'm wondering these days, "are Americans ready to ask real questions and have a real dialogue about ANYTHING?"...folks hopping from one company to the next, padding their resumes and leaving before they're found out...we've perfected these 'habits' over a decade and it's going to be tough to break them...of course, the financial crash may not let us do this voluntarily and in our perferred timeframe...

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