In the 80's there were excesses to be sure....that said, mergers,acquisitions and other forms of industry consolidation are necessary and vital tools to continue to increase the efficiency of our capital stock, increase productivity, enhance innovation and redirect the investment of dead capital, end the misery and change the career paths of those that can no longer compete.... As a result, while not perfect, let's not forget that in the history of mankind, there has never been an economic engine as efficient and productive as that which exists in the US today...... Terry
Terry, There's too much complaining in this country. If one bought Exxon 5 years ago, your rate of return would have been something like 10-11 % . Not bad at all , but not like they have mugged the public. At least Wall Street does not view it that way.
Big government is a greater problem than big business. The noose around the public's neck gets tighter and tighter as the years go by.
Amen to that AJ! Every time I see a discussion on increasing government, penalizing those that have achieved success and rewarding those that have not, I envision the founding fathers and the constitutional framers spinning in their graves.....let's not destroy the fundamental basis behind our ascendancy to world leadership. Terry
In the 80s our government allowed business activities that bordered on criminal and probably were in the interest of staying out the way...let businessmen be businessmen, etc. and other trickle down Reaganomics that didn't take into account personal greed becoming a factor. Since then we have Milliken, Enron, Worldcom, HealthSouth and KM as examples of criminals posing as top notch businessmen who would make all those prudent business decisions that you mention BuckeyeT. My point is that the "excesses" of the 80s were more than excesses and there is nothing to suggest that these kinds of selfish, criminal personal wealth building behaviors will just dry up and go away. Why then should we blindly trust those like oil induistry execs who are basking in record profits while the rest of us tax paying Americans suffer at the pump. I do not think anyone on this board will truthfully answer that if Exxon and Co. post record after record profit while gas prices were to soar past 4, 5 or 6 dollars per gallon that they would just suck it up and make it up in their personal 401-K because thems the breaks and that's the "American way". and W's gonna take care of us.
As a point of reference, of all the examples you gave the only one that occurred in the 80's was Michael Milken. The rest all blossomed during that anti-big business Clinton presidency. How about that!
MCG, these examples you cited were criminals who've broken the law....lying and scheming to perpetrate fraud and bilk their shareholders, customers and employees out of millions of dollars.....that's as far away as one can get from a prudent business decision. There is not even a remote equivalency - on any level. Terry
It's not a noose around the Public's neck but rather would be a noose around the individual greedmonger's neck. How many John Q. Public's are in the executive boardroom at Exxon? How many John Q. Public's lost their hard earned, trusting in their company leadership life's savings at Enron or Worldcom and just who is it in our government that even gives a **** about their plight?
I'll go on record as saying also that if even 10 people got screwed royally by a small goup or an indidividual so that individual or group could feather his/their own nest egg and really have no long term company objective in mind by their actions then that is NOT the American way and is NOT acceptable. It has happened in recent past and I have to point out that the oil industry execs who are now billionaires who had better closely study the lessons of Enron and Worldcom. If the Public get's angry enough then Congress, even if it's an oil-lovin Republican Congress, get's off it's elite ass and begins to ask questions as they did in the fall before strangely enough....gas prices backed down.
Exxon is the least of our problems and not even a culprit in the oil crisis. If you have to blame someone, blame the Arabs,blame our government and blame the American public who do have alternatives to gas guzzling SUV's. I know Buck Terry has gone over the fundamentals of LIFO inventory adjustments and price increases countless times. When a service station rapidly raise's their prices , there is no arguiment, just pure public ignorance about finance and the concept of doing business. Even all those corporate failures do not compare to the every day theft of our time and money by government at ALL levels. Corporate theft and mismanagement pales in comparison to government theft and mismanagement. At least Big business has some transparency. Government has none !! Your Federal,State and Local officials all the way down to the clerk answer to no one and have no accountability for their actions. Their jobs are secure and almost can not be fired. They answer to no one and are out of control. Bueracracy today is choking the american public and robbing the people of freedom and tax dollars. If you are truly a centrist, you would agree. I'm waiting for the American public to rise up against government tyranny. I still have my army jacket mothballed from the Vietnam era. :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
MCG, I agree with you....there are bad people in the world trying to do bad things. That is not the fault of Exxon/Big Business.....no more than it is the fault of organized religion that Baker/Swaggert and their ilk "screwed royally" thousands of people out of millions of dollars and no more than it is the fault of charitable organizations like United Way/Salvation Army over the malfeasance cases of their leadership.....there are bad people in big business, just as there are bad people in organized religion and charitable organizations. My take is that there are vastly more good people than bad in positions of responsibility in corporate America and organized religion and charitable organizations all trying to do the right thing. Companies, of any size, can not succeed unless they are more successful at providing for the needs of their customers, employees and owners than is the competition.....there can not be a successful leadership team in the country who is not aware of that fundamental business proposition. btw, just who is John Q. Public? Terry
AJ, my friend, you paint with a very broad brush. Yes bureaucracy is a huge problem and only getting worse. (My biggest problem was in trying to spell it.) :roll: Yet I know a lot of public employees...some elected, some appointed and some hired...and an awful lot of them consider themselves just public servants doing their best at thankless jobs, often for rather low pay. They often put up with abuse from the public while they doing their best to help them. The problem as I see it is in the growth of government and regulations from the top...the attitude that everything can be solved by passing a new set of regulations (while of course leaving all the old ones in place) is choking everybody...including small-time local public servants trying to deal with all kinds of forms, mandated reports, etc. laid on them by the legislatures. stu