What is Obama going to do when he is finally forced to acknowledge the liabilities of Fannie and Freddie? which by the way Dodd-Frank bill continues to protect and allows them to operate under the same rules.

Originally Posted by djplong

JimJoe: Even the racist Henry Ford knew a good business model. Keeping prices LOW meant long-term company growth with meant a lot more to the shareholders (although Ford was a private company back then) than today's Holy Grail of Next Quarter's Numbers. His motto even included paying employees "the highest possible wage" to keep skilled workers.

We're in a race to the bottom when it comes to what companies USED to call "our most valuable resource" - employees. We joke about it these days with call center in Bangalore giving "customer service" with an accent so thick you need a supercomputer to decode it.

Whereas there used to be more of a balance between the employee, the customer and the shareholder, it's all shareholder now. I mean, there have even been shareholder-induced lawsuits that want to punish a CEO for not producing enough profit, regardless of the fact that the company was healthy. Shareholders now want every single penny (look at day-traders) and if they don't get it, they bail out without a care.

By and large we have completely lost our ability to look at the long-term big picture. We don't do big projects anymore. NIMBY and BANANA (Not In My Backyard - Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone) rule this country now.

Every point you made above made my point. If the action is in the interest of the shareholder, the business will succeed. You assume that business will always act in the short term interest of business, even to the detriment of the business (when they do, they fail), and that any long term interest of business is in the interest of the public. Neither are correct. Microsoft has saved cash instead of paying dividends, not for the public interest but for the long term interest of the business. Sometimes the interests of the shareholders coincide with the interests of the public (pay higher wages to get or keep better workers) but those decisions should never be made just to pay higher salaries than the worker is worth for the public good. If they do, the go out of business, or they move to a cheaper wage market BECAUSE the purpose of business is to make a profit (short term and long term), not to serve the public welfare.
JJ

Originally Posted by DaleMN

Lame-stream media?.....now that's a novel name. Original?

Figures that's all you got out of my post. It's a right-wing talk radio phrase I knew you'd like.

JimJoe: I'll give you an example of what I mean.

AT&T.

"Ma Bell" fought to keep it's monopoly. Tooth and nail. The court cases went on for ages. Investors didn't want to give up the golden goose. They couldn't see past their own noses.

Those that had stock and kept it after Judge Green's ruling in the 1980s (I worked for a company doing telecommunications analysis at the time) became many times more wealthy. The "Baby Bells" went on to see their markets explode.

Now, I'm not saying that business decision from a courtroom are good rules of thumb. I'm saying that it took a judge to force an entranched company to do things for *the people*. (Remember, it was an anti-trust ruling).

Prices dropped, competition made things MUCH better for everyone and shareholders got stinking rich.

People who serve on boards, by and large, are completely out of touch with their customers and are notorious for making incredible mistakes (New Coke anyone?) The larger the company, the more insulated the board is and the more out of touch they are.

Mark my words - Apple could be the next one people notice. They've gotten so huge but you're locked into THEIR ecosystem when you buy an i-Anything. This is ironic since their famous 1984 commercial was about busting out of externally imposed limitations (Androis is starting to scare them)

But THOSE are examples of what I mean about being disproportionately focused on the shareholders.