The Corporate Power People will never admit this - especially not to themselves: By killing

[Cal33]

Last edited Thu Mar 10, 2016, 02:59 PM - Edit history (2)

off the middle-classes, they are making profits hand over fist - but only INITIALLY. The
middle-classes are the ones who are coming out with the new ideas and inventing new
products. The corporate business execs. simply manipulate money to make more money.
They provide neither services nor can they invent new products. Most of the creative
and productive work are done by the middle-class people. The wealth of any nation
depends upon having enough middle-class people doing the creative and productive
work, which the elites, themselves, are not capable of doing. These dumb-assed
corporate elites don't even realize that they need the middle-classes for their own wealth
to keep on growing.

When the point of having too few middle-class people in the nation has been reached,
the productivity of our country can't help but go downhill. There will be less profits
for everyone -- including the Corporate Power people.

I don't think Hillary Clinton understands this point. She, too, sees no further than the
immediate profit that can be made now, and that is why she is so pally with Wall Street.

Bernie Sanders is the only one among the presidential candidates who is trying to make
sure that what we are doing today will not serve to destroy us in the future.

I also think it's possible that some of the psychopathic CEOs might not even care what
happens to our country in the future. They're focused only on the profit and the power
that can be bought with that profit RIGHT NOW. Nothing else matters to them.

I wonder if this makes any sense at all to the Hillary supporters here at DU. Is what I
am describing here right or wrong? If it does make some sense, isn't it about time to
make a change?

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

1. We're an 'old' market.

When they'd sucked every last dollar out of us, they'll move on to the newer 'emerging' markets.

[Skwmom]

3. Exactly. We are in the "suck every last dollar out of us" state. I'm amazed by how many people don't

think about where this all leads.

[Cal33]

5. I agree with you only partially. The young are dependent upon their elders for

their livelihood. When too many of their elders have been killed off, many of
their young will be killed off also. There will not be enough young ones surviving
to produce adequate numbers of your "newer emerging markets."

This is not something that will happen between one day and the next. It's a
gradual process that is taking place right now, and will continue to worsen
slowly -- unless we change. And the sooner we change the better.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

6. I didn't mean old people vs young people. I meant the US market vs China or India and so on. nt

[Cal33]

8. The Corporate Power people are making it more difficult for young people to go to college,

aren't they? The decrease in the number of scientists, engineers ...etc... over the past
few decades is remarkable. How many companies have to employ foreign scientists
and engineers here in America because there are not enough home-grown ones to fill
in these positions? I've also read that there are many foreign scientists and engineers
-- especially those with Masters and Ph.D.s -- working at Silicon Valley. Without them
Silicon Valley couldn't do what it is doing.

I am all for foreigners coming here to work. Many of them will stay and become
American citizens. That's fine with me. There is also nothing wrong with having
enough home-grown scientists and engineers either, but we can't, because college has
become too expensive - thanks to those greedy bank and other people thriving on the
student-loan racket. I've heard of students having debts as high as $150,000. Young
people starting out in their professional lives with that kind of debt!! I've also read of
these shysters putting people into jail because they couldn't pay their debts. We're
going back to the Middle Ages with debtors' prisons.

If he becomes president, Bernie will clamp down on this type of racket, too.

[highprincipleswork]

2. This is exactly what Gordon Gekko role model said today. Money high up doesn't circulate.

[Cal33]

14. Yes, money high up doesn't circulate. It tends to hide and stay put in the small off-shore

island nations for good.

[rhett o rick]

4. H. Clnton is a capitalist with a capital C. Capitalists may understand that their system

is not sustainable but they are determined to get as many of the gooses golden eggs as they can before the goose dies. They see the havoc that is caused by their greed as simple colateral damage. They don't wish that we die, they just don't care if we do.

[BernieforPres2016]

7. Corporations are being milked, just like the 99%

Corporate profit margins are near all time highs, but if you look into how they're doing it, it is unsustainable. They are achieving these profit margins largely through cost cutting, financial engineering, aggressive accounting and other smoke and mirrors. Borrow money at 3% to 4% (which is tax deductible), buy back your stock at 20 times earnings and you boost your earnings per share. Buy or merge with a competitor (anti-trust is pretty much a thing of the past), shut down some facilities. lay off people and consolidate operations. Cut long term spending like research and development. Go right up to and then over the line to push your profits (for accounting purposes) from higher tax countries into offshore tax havens and lower your corporate tax rate. Outsource your manufacturing operations and your customer service operations to the lowest cost countries you can find. Jack up the prices of your products as high as you possibly can, particularly if you sell products that have patent protection (like brand name pharmaceuticals) or high customer costs and/or energy to switching.

But companies do have one great investment opportunity, and that is to invest in politicians so they can write legislation that gives them special tax breaks and other forms of corporate welfare. As an example, the pharmaceutical companies benefit from the fact that Medicare is forbidden to try to negotiate lower drug prices without getting permission from Congress. As a result, Medicare pays $16 billion per year more for brand name prescription drugs than they would if they paid the same rates as the VA and Medicaid (and even the VA and Medicaid rates are higher than the average prices paid around the world).

As part of milking their companies, CEOs keep giving themselves and other senior executives larger and larger compensation packages. They stack their Board of Directors with their friends and serve on the Boards of their friends. Then they use the same "compensation consultants" who write provisions in their contracts that guarantee that they will be paid in the upper half, or upper quartile, of CEOs in their industry or in a group of industries. And then there is a loop where the pay increases across companies come one after the other, driven by these contracts. "Hey, that guy over there is making $15 million and I'm only making $10 million!"

In my opinion, people who are investing in stocks of companies that are being milked like this and have unsustainably high profit margins are going to get crushed again. This can not be sustained. It's only a matter of time.

[Cal33]

9. Yes, I see Internet ads warning us that another crash in our economy is coming this year, and

it will be worse than the one in 2007 and 2008. I don't know how accurate these ads are.

[BernieforPres2016]

11. Those internet ads are always out there

Typically from garbage stock market advisory letters and/or gold bugs. But I used to do security analysis and dig through annual reports, 10-Ks and proxies. The quality of corporate earnings in most industries has been declining for at least a couple of decades. But with near zero interest rates, people feel like they have to invest their money somewhere to hope to get a return.

If Bernie was to become President, I would not want to be invested in the stock market because he's going to try to take action to pop the earnings bubble of many industries: financial services, pharmaceuticals, health insurance companies, oil and gas, etc. And then there are sham industries that probably shouldn't even exist, like payday lenders, for profit education, for profit prisons, etc.

I think it's maybe 50-50 that we get a significant stock market selloff (i.e. 15-20% or more) prior to the election. The warning signs are everywhere. The collapse in oil prices, negative GDP in countries like Brazil and significant slowing in China, a big decline in junk bonds, a big decline over the last year in bank stocks (particularly major European banks).

[Cal33]

13. Many thanks for the info.

[ibegurpard]

10. There is a name for something like that

Which occurs in nature... it's called cancer.

[Cal33]

12. Psycho- and sociopaths have been the main cause of wars and the resultant human misery

and deaths since the beginning of human history. Yes, they are indeed cancerous.