Dec 05 2008

Bail GM! Bail Chrysler! Bail Ford!

Category: Economy,My Web Log — Admin @ 13:29

A recent national poll suggested that six out of ten Americans oppose a federal bailout of the “Big 3″ automakers in the United States: GM, Ford, and Chrysler. This majority consensus does not surprise me the least bit because the American public is a very knowledgeable entity or at least it likes to think so. In case you didn’t catch the sarcasm in the last sentence, I simply do not agree with the poll’s findings. The poll only truly reflects people’s emotions and “group think” attitude towards federal bailouts in general and we all know that emotion only clouds one’s judgment.

The U.S. Government should not only bailout the Big 3 automakers, but it must do so immediately and not vote solely on the emotions of the American public. Since January 2008, over 1.9 million jobs have been lost and many more are at risk if this bailout bill is not passed. Failure to pass this bill endangers the livelihood of over 2 million individuals employed by the “Big 3″, spanning various industries. “Bailout” seems to be the play in Washington these days but yet lawmakers are still not convinced on whether or not to bailout the auto industry. $34 billion is all that is being requested by GM, Ford, and Chrysler collectively; this is compared to the $150 billion bailout of AIG, $250 billion for Fannie and Freddie, $300 billion for Citigroup, and etc. Most people would argue that the delay in this bailout of the “Big 3″ is due to the fact that they have no concrete plans for restructuring or returning back to profitability. You know, that same “concrete plan” that Paulson gave to Congress for the passing of the $700 billion dollars earlier this 4th Quarter, which is still sitting in limbo. The US auto industry is in this predicament, not because of their lack of foresight, but their exceedingly high overhead costs, consisting mostly of union workers’ salaries.

Bailouts are not a new idea, in fact, the U.S. Government has been financially rescuing companies since the early 1900′s. Proof that the US auto industry bailout will not be in vain is evident in the bailout of Chrysler in 1980 for $4 billion in stock warrants. Three years after this bailout, Chrysler returned to profitability and its stock performance flourished. Chrysler then purchased back the stock warrants from the government, turning its $4 billion investment into over $600 million in profits.

Simply put: The “Big 3′ must be bailed out.

Dec 05 2008

WHY YOU SHOULD BE GREEDY

Category: Economy,My Web Log,Politics — Admin @ 00:23

“The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed — for lack of a better word — is good.
Greed is right.
Greed works.
Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.
Greed, in all of its forms — greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge — has marked the upward surge of mankind.
And greed — you mark my words — will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA” (The movie, Wall Street).

There is not a more accurate definition of greed to date than this one provided by the fictional multi-millionaire and corporate raider, Gordon Gekko, in Oliver Stone’s 1987 classic, Wall Street. Greed is often associated with money or wealth by the hoi polloi in terms of money laundering by chief executives or the widening income gap between the rich and the poor; but, nobody ever wants to talk about the positives. Why should you be greedy? According to Gekko, you should be greedy because it is innate and your very survival and social advancement depends on it. We’ve all heard, at some point, the ideology, ‘survival of the fittest’; this ideology becomes more relevant today as globalization becomes more of a reality.

Globalization is the reason why the richest man in the world is no longer an American, a title Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, held for over a decade. Globalization is the reason why we all have friends online from all over the country and worldwide and yet we continue to seek more on popular websites such as Myspace.com and Facebook.com. Globalization is the reason why greed is here to stay and Gordon Gekko’s quote is still relevant after twenty years.

You should be greedy because you already are. Our greed for more friends to increase our friends’ list online, greed for achieving the American Dream, greed for love, greed for achieving good grades, and greed for power, are all healthy and required for humanity’s continued growth and increasing global competition. The critics out there may wonder about the effect of greed on social injustice, but I ask, isn’t greed for social justice a type of greed? For the sake of my argument, let’s forget that greed belongs to the nomenclature of vices referred to as the ‘Seven deadly sins,’ or that it carries a negative connation, or that it even exists in any lexicon. What we are left with is a classless, stateless, pseudo-utopia. This new pseudo-utopia can now be referred to as a communist or socialist entity.

The absence for the need to be greedy only creates an opportunity for the human spirit to become greedy as in the case of pre-WWII Europe and the likes of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. I perceive greed as being on both ends of a spectrum and in the middle is motive. One has the choice to travel right or left (or in this case, good or bad) with one’s motive but no matter the choice there will always be equilibrium, but that’s not to imply that there is equality in power distribution. Greed is like the internet, it is nowhere but everywhere or vice versa; in other words, no one claims to be greedy but we all are; as opposed to if we all acknowledged our innate greed then no one would be “greedy”. If success is supposedly 100% attitude, who’s to say greed should not be incorporated into one’s attitude?