Thaddeus Gadfly

I’m against the whole concept of public corporations and the stock market, in general. Shared-equity of private corporations makes sense, but the public corporation is an idea I just don’t get. If the argument is that it is a means of acquiring capital to start businesses and fund entrepeneurial projects, why can’t bonds do that? Wouldn’t that be a better idea? Think about it. Bonds means that there are no shareholders making a lot of noise about instant returns on their investments, which might cause board members to pressure company officials to enact policies which only help the short term, and not the long term. Isn’t that what was happening to US Auto industry for many years, while the Japanese got a leg on us by long term strategies? Would that have happened if these companies acquired capital via the bond markets, where they had to pay them back over a long time, and therefore, the incentive would be for long term strategies?

What do stock traders do? What service to they provide? After the initial IPO, all you have is paper being shuffled around, it’s a veritable ponzi scheme, is it not? Some might argue that the stock will only go up if a company is healthy. Fine, but stocks are over-valued (way above book value) by this bidding process, so this is why I write that it is a “veritable” ponzi scheme. I don’t know that it is technically a duck, but it sure quacks and walks like one. In my view, the only ethical value of the stock is the book value (the accounting value) and any value beyond that is a ponzi value. By accounting value I mean that the value of a given stock is determined by  the total equity divided by the number of outstanding shares. Any value above that is a ponzi value. And the ability to trade stocks makes it easy for those who have inside knowledge to take advantage of those that don’t, and I will bet that this type of thing goes on a lot more than insiders would have us realize. Say you were at a gambling table, and your opponent (corporate insiders) could see your hand, would you want to play against them? This is precisely the situation we have with the stock market.

My view is that if there are going to be stocks, make them only transferable (saleable back) to the issuer, and not tradable, and the stockholder actually gets a certificate, holds onto for a long time. No bidding or auctioning of stocks allowed. This way, the incentive is to hold onto the stocks, and the true growth of the company via its ability to deliver a quality product, rather than then over-hyping of the stock by speculators, determines the value of the stock. This, in my view, is the more moral way.

See, the current set up allows those who are in-the-know to manipulate stocks, to benefit financially in a way other than earning money by providing a service to the community, by pitting buyers and sellers in a way where they can reap cash windfalls at the expense of others. Recently, a CEO dumped 60 million worth of his shares in his company overwhich he presided as Chairman. Undoubtebly, he knew that the stocks were going to crash. This means that those who purchased those stocks, were unwittingly involved in a mass transer of wealth, from the buyer to the seller. And it was not a quid pro quo, something of value for something of value, it was like playing against an opponent in a poker game in which the opponent can see your hand. This should be illegal. McCain said, “this is got to stop”, and he was correct.

I bet that this (the current state of corporatism)  is one of the great contributors to boom and bust economics, and I don’t see how this is a good thing.

If you know something I don’t, please enlighten me.

McCain does not deserve to be president just because he has had military experience, or was a war hero. Wisdom & Judgement is a quality of greater importance than experience.

One might argue that experience garners wisdom, and it should, but not always. What is clear to me is that, in McCain, we have a man who has had direct experience with one of the collosal blunders of all time regarding US Foreign policy (outside of Iraq) and that was Vietnam. If anyone should understand and have learned from our history clearly it would be him.

But no, McCain wants us there “until we are victorious”, whatever that means.

He tells us that the surge is “working”. Or is it? Violence is down, that is evident. But simple math could have predicted that if you greatly increase our presence, violence would diminish, and, apparently it has. But one could easily assert, and I think quite correctly, that if we leave ten years from now, violence will return to previous levels, or if we leave tommorrow, violence will return to previous levels. If that is the probable outcome, why not leave sooner than later?

Therein lies the debate. The argument rises or falls on that one premise. And the premise is an assumption, i.e, the assumption that if we hang around long enough, spend a trillion bucks, go further and further into debt, Iraq will get its act together.

McCain, et al. , argue that all hell will break loose if we leave, and that if we stay long enough, Iraq will get it’s political act together. Well, they said that five years ago, they said it four years ago, they said it three years ago, and so on, and they keep telling us this, but what is becoming evident is that they, McCain, Bush, and all of the neocons, don’t have a clue.

Just as they didn’t have a clue when they got us into this grandiose and tragic quagmire in the first place.

Another point McCain raises is that we need to stay and leave when the time is right in order to protect our “honor”.

Excuse me? What honor? We zero’ed out that account with the rest of the world quite a few years. So, we are going to kill more Americans because McCain wants to cling to some vague notion of honor?

“We need to go there so they won’t come here”. He, Bush, and their ilk, say.

But, they don’t get it, they are here because we are there. We are the intruders.

If someone is intruding in your house, and you want them to leave, on what moral ground do they stand if they claim that they must stay otherwise you will “win”. What kind of bizarre and twisted logic is that?

How can anyone trust the judgement of these people?

The war is ruining our country on many levels, diverting resources that could be used at home, and it is costing lives, Americans and allies who are being needlessly killed; it is destroying the very fabric of this nation, putting it to decline. All imperialistic empires that did not cease being imperialistic vanished, and that is the path we are on, the path of “nation building”, which is euphemism for imperialism.

Obama is the only candidate who has been pure on the war. He was against it when very few politicians had the courgage to speak against it. The others candidates that did, Kucinich and Paul, they didn’t have a chance to get elected.

I don’t care what his pastor says or thinks, Obama is a great man, an eloquent man, and I will trust him and his reasons for not abandoning his pastor . After years of a President who could barely utter a compound sentence, let alone a simple sentence without uttering guffaws by the truckloads, a little eloquence would be just what the proverbial doctor ordered.

He is the right man in this juncture in history.

I predict Obama will be our next president.

But God help him, because America’s fiscal crisis seems to be getting progressively worse, and its ensuing nightmares are going to be one of the greatest challenges of this century.

A vote for McCain is a vote for a bankrupt foreign policy.