Uh... wait... sorry, the video has been pulled down from Youtube. TheStreet.com has claimed 'copyright infringement'.
Asshole.
Here is a discussion of the removal by YouTomb, a group that studies why videos get pulled down from Youtube: http://youtomb.mit.edu/youtube/ZWVmlxhk-tU
OK Jim, have it your way - you leave the people no alternative but to instead post the highly embarrassing takedown of you by Comedian Jon Stewart, in which he went through the video point by point:
Anyway this is a year old article that was attempting to do the same thing Cramer took pride in:
The problem? Apple had too much cash. They were building a huge reserve - I suspect even bigger than people knew about because Apple defers reporting specifically because of nonsense like this. Too much cash. That's a reason to downgrade a company that is, according to something like 100% of mass media opinion, revolutionizing personal computing, music consumption... look, unlike usual I'm not going into a list mode here of everything these guys are great at.
Too much cash. That's not just a small problem. I'm going to reprint here something I recently wrote on another site called Alternet, regarding the nature of the Corporate Structure:
"By law every CEO is mandated to suck every nickel of profit he can out of the business by the end of 3 months.
A few years ago Apple was accused of having "too much cash" by a lot of the jokers calling themselves analysts. The reason that's important is that companies buying other companies is considered an acceptable, important, and necessary action to suck out more profit when you've maxed out what your base company can do.
Apple doesn't offer a dividend - so they have to justify that they can re-invest earnings better than you could. By holding money in cash, which, as the anal-ysts contend, just "sits there", you aren't actively re-investing that money, and it should go back out to the consum- I mean shareholder.
Understand where this is going - if enough of that talk builds up, Apple could face a shareholder revolt. It happens. They escape that by being flat out the best at what they do, so all people can do is grumble.
And of course, in what George Soros has called "The end of the World Economic System" Apple's cash reserves had them floating pretty nicely. Until recently they hadn't laid off so much as a janitor. While everyone else is hand-wringing about the lack of credit available, Apple has been getting by ok on all that cash "just sitting there".
A few weeks ago they finally laid off 50 employees - but the truth is it was the "Enterprise" division, which I have to believe Steve Jobs loathes - I won't go into that here since it's not relevant to the article.
But this understanding IS important - companies that don't buy other companies, that don't revolve on credit, that try to actually save money for times like these, are asking for real trouble. Madness, yes, but that's rampant capitalism for ya."
A few years ago Apple was accused of having "too much cash" by a lot of the jokers calling themselves analysts. The reason that's important is that companies buying other companies is considered an acceptable, important, and necessary action to suck out more profit when you've maxed out what your base company can do.
Apple doesn't offer a dividend - so they have to justify that they can re-invest earnings better than you could. By holding money in cash, which, as the anal-ysts contend, just "sits there", you aren't actively re-investing that money, and it should go back out to the consum- I mean shareholder.
Understand where this is going - if enough of that talk builds up, Apple could face a shareholder revolt. It happens. They escape that by being flat out the best at what they do, so all people can do is grumble.
And of course, in what George Soros has called "The end of the World Economic System" Apple's cash reserves had them floating pretty nicely. Until recently they hadn't laid off so much as a janitor. While everyone else is hand-wringing about the lack of credit available, Apple has been getting by ok on all that cash "just sitting there".
A few weeks ago they finally laid off 50 employees - but the truth is it was the "Enterprise" division, which I have to believe Steve Jobs loathes - I won't go into that here since it's not relevant to the article.
But this understanding IS important - companies that don't buy other companies, that don't revolve on credit, that try to actually save money for times like these, are asking for real trouble. Madness, yes, but that's rampant capitalism for ya."
The 'investor rights' movement has gone completely bananas. Yes, I think it was a good thing to begin forcing CEOs to actually be responsive to the investor, instead of acting like they'd suckered another rube into handing over money for essentially nothing. Any serious reading of the works of Benjamin Graham highlights what used to go on, not just in terms of profit-sharing but in terms of transparency.
But it's gone way out of whack. The investors now - with almost no real education in finance or economics; I've done the numbers, I'll talk about that later, but we aren't educated in this country on these subjects, purposely - want to actually run the day to day operations of the company. So a very wise decision that a lot of us would make, namely, saving money, is considered an egregious waste of the investor's equity.
Huh?
You invest in a business. Not a stock. I don't blame those of you out there that don't get this, because there's a lot of money spent keeping you ignorant on this. But let me put it to you straight: those of you speculating in stocks are driving the economy, and this country, into the ground. You've been doing it for at least a hundred years, and it's the reason we have to have periodic contractions. 'Contraction' is a nice, reasonable sounding, bullshit term for 'Correction'. As in - ok, now that we've bullshitted around about value, creating fake wealth, we have to get real.
When you invest in a business, you invest in its people, and in their ability to keep the company strong, profitable, stable. Saving money for rainy days isn't just a smart idea, it's essential.
Think twice before you continue to allow others to explain this all to you. Do the independent research - and by that I don't mean reading a prospectus. I mean starting at Chapter One of Economics. Take yourself back to school.
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Corporations continue to foster belief in this sort of nonsense by their actions. Case in point - a major national retailer recently made a big deal of announcing that henceforth executive compensation would be tied to stock price. Not only can I not believe this, I cannot believe that they trumpeted it like it's some sort of fabulous idea. It's this sort of pea-brained short-term thinking that has the country in the bind its in. Why not tie compensation to running your company in the most efficient, ethical, profitable way possible? Then the stock price will take care of itself.
ReplyDeleteSteven -
ReplyDeleteThanks for commenting. Yes, the notion that you could tie anything performance-related to the stock price is insane. The employee has next to no effect on the stock price. If anything, it is encouraging madness. The average employee now has every reason to try and create or encourage outrageous behavior that results in press attention, since this is the fastest way to affect stock price.
What is troubling is that just two months ago it seemed like everyone understood the stock market was a largely dysfunctional system, and that the public had been 'played' by insiders. Today all that special knowledge is gone, and we are witnessing a very rapid return to 'normal'. I've read that Pres. Obama has stated he is trying to return the conditions that allow 'securitization', another tool everyone seemed to understand two months ago as a sure-course to disaster. Today, barely a peep about it.
I'm personally of the opinion that the workers should all be participating to some extent in the profits, and in ownership of the company. Not exactly like the stock-option program as it stands today, where companies print stock like cash and use the investor's equity to pay the employee; employees should benefit from a real system of proportional ownership, and THAT would be a way to encourage long-term sensibility in growing and maintaining a company. There are probably hundreds of great ways to participate in the company - tying salary to short term stock performance is not one of them.
Thanks for stopping by!