Monday, June 17, 2013

HORRORS DON'T END...(ORIGINALLY POSTED 3/15/12)

Nothing can compare to the horrors of World War II. The Syrian people are being slaughtered by another mini "Madman". Watching the United Nations and the major powers be completely impotent, (no matter what their rational) is best described by the cliche "A Plague on both your Houses". In the 21st century, there is no excuse, none whatsoever.

Friday, June 14, 2013

SNOWDEN - THE ALL AMERICAN COWARD...

The Japanese attacked and destroyed most of our Naval Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii in 1941.  Shortly thereafter our Nation declared war on Japan and Germany.  The majority of our citizens did not want to enter into another European and Pacific War.

In 1942/43 our code breakers were able to interpret Japanese military messages.  The Japanese were planning an attack on Midway, approximately halfway between Hawaii and Japan.  The Japanese did not know we had broken their code.  If they had taken Midway, their control over the entire Pacific ocean would have been catastrophic and had a good chance of altering the outcome of the war.

The Japanese sent four aircraft carriers under the umbrella of a large supporting fleet.

Since we had broken their codes, and they didn't know it, we were able to send our last three aircraft carriers to lie in wait for the impending attack.  In spite of surprising the huge Japanese fleet, we almost lost the battle.  Our pilots were young, inexperienced and the Japanese defenses were formidable.  At the end we destroyed four Japanese aircraft carriers, an incredible feat totally due to our code breakers and valiant fighter and bomber pilots.

BUT THIS IS THE REAL STORY.  IMAGINE IF SOMEONE ON THE CODE BREAKING TEAM OR ON OUR NAVAL SHIPS DECIDED THAT THEY THOUGHT TOO MANY JAPANESE WERE GOING TO DIE BY SURPRISE ATTACK AND DECIDED TO SEEK OUT SOMEONE AT THE JAPANESE EMBASSY TO INFORM THEM OF OUR PLANS.

It's obvious we would have been dealing with a traitor.  It should also be obvious that we had to prevent this from happening again.  So our government started to monitor mail, phone calls and travel plans of those people who might be in a position to repeat treason.  Today many people would actually proclaim that privacy rights trump protection rights.

I can't think of greater gibberish, probably coming from people who have never served in the armed forces.  God Bless America.


Thursday, June 13, 2013

SNOWDEN IS A CHUMP...

There are all different kinds of mental illnesses.  They have all kinds of names, from schizophrenia,  borderline personality, sociopath, obsessive compulsive, etc.

The person who assassinated Abraham Lincoln believed in his cause.  The same for the assasinator of Kennedy, the attacker of Reagan and the numerous other attempts on other Presidents lives.

Snowden is just another form of terrorist, hiding behind his narcissistic personality and grandiose inflated ego who is probably looking to write a book, make a movie and be crowned Emperor.

If more and more people would decide that the rule of law was not to be followed whenever they believed that their illegal views took precedence over lawful procedures there would be no where to hide, the anarchy would be so pervasive.

The argument is made that if it wasn't for the brave, such as Rosa Parks, Nelson Mandela, Women Suffragettes, and Gorbachev, tyranny would prevail and necessary changes would never have taken place. But none of these people committed treason!

Many of these dilemmas could be included under the banner "the clash of absolutes".

Snowden set himself up at as the ultimate decider of the what's in the best interest of national security.  He did this against the law and I'm sure with absolutely no knowledge of the catastrophic risks the nation is facing from world wide terrorism.

It seems pretty safe to conclude that the elected government believes that extraordinary risks require extraordinary actions.  There is no question that an enormous number of problems will develop from the information gathering that the Federal Government has now undertaken.

Each of us should carefully weigh realistically which is the greater risk to our freedoms.  Privacy protection or terrorism protection.

Friday, June 7, 2013

IRS AGENTS - THE ULTIMATE CHEATERS...

When an IRS employee ends up for six nights in the Presidential Suite of a major hotel, a tipping point has been exceeded.  This is what's really happened.  We now live in a country where IRS agents have a serious conflict of interest with the taxpayers that they audit.

The IRS auditors, as they delve into everyone else's personal finances are obviously saying to themselves; the more money I get from you the more likely it is that I can stay in the Presidential Suite, or get a pay increase, or get a bag of goodies, or fly first class, or attend a fancy convention...

The Congress has not even begun to uncover the under the table payments to IRS employees.

So many people have been afraid of the tea party and some parts of their agenda and yet have been blind to the Unionized Democratic party and the left wing wannabes extracting their "pound of flesh" from what they are obviously conceiving as the private sector.

Greed, so often attached to the businessmen, has now seeped into the bloodstream of an unknown number of government employees.

Government jobs are paid for with taxes from other people.  Unionized IRS agents have now figured out how to extract taxes in order to enhance their own personal standard of living.  

Saturday, June 1, 2013

IF HEDGE FUND MANAGERS CAN'T BEAT THE S &P HOW CAN THEY TELL OTHERS HOW TO RUN THEIR BUSINESS?

8/28/89
Institutional Fund Managers and Other People’s Money
By: Shepard D. Osherow
Chairman & Chief Executive Officer
Osherow Siegel Capital Corporation

There was a time when a share of a corporation’s stock was considered to be an investment in its future. As idealistic as this may sound today, it is (or was) a concept at the heart of the capitalist system. The purchase of a stock made the bearer a partial owner of that company and therefore entitled to a proportionate voice in issues brought before the shareholders. Years ago, when the market was predominately comprised of individuals who placed their own money into equities, the assumption was that whatever voting power accrued to the shareholder would logically be used to enhance the performance of the firm, (and hence the investment) over time.

In 1989, however, between 50 to 70% of all publicly traded stock was “owned” by institutions and/or invested via professional managers and arbitragers who vote with no regard for anything but immediate profit. More importantly, however, through the powers extended to the fund managers via proxy voting institutions are fast becoming a highly vocal factor in the corporate board rooms of public companies, exercising increasing control over issues ranging from their day to day operations to long-term business strategies.

What’s wrong with this picture? Plenty. Because the so-called “managers” who are exerting this influence on corporate structure and strategy are, first, not professional business managers at all but private or government employees rewarded largely for their attempts to generate increased returns over short periods of time. Secondly, these people invest (and vote) with money that actually belongs not to them, but to the wage-earners who have virtually no say in where their pension money is invested or how that investment may ultimately affect their own job security in the years to come.

The reality is that this deferred voting power could have a lasting and quite possibly detrimental effect on the very people the pension funds are supposed to benefit: the pensioners themselves.
What we are witnessing is the institutionalization of American business. It was inadvertently spawned by ERISA and Federal and legal constraints making it virtually impossible for pension funds not to take a higher price on a company under hostile or otherwise leveraged attack. This has placed unchecked power behind institutional investors to influence and undermine corporate management’s control over businesses they’re paid to run. Their understanding and utililization of this phenomenon has provided the impetus (and resources) necessary to encourage complex legal buyouts and hostile M&A arrangements among corporate raiders and aggressive financial exploiters alike. Many of these deals couldn’t happen without the supporting power institutional funds wield through proxy power.

How did this come about? By encouraging the Funds to vote and sell to the highest immediate bidder, government, legal and performance fears have focused the institutions toward short term market performance. This offers scant incentive to finding the competent business managers to lead American companies, the best of whom operate towards disciplined, long range objectives. Instead, it has become commonplace to read about takeover coalitions of institutions, bankers, and M&A speculators manipulating even successful businesses for immediate profits and huge fees. This attitude has become so pervasive through the availability of tax deductible debt we’ve come to casually accept such absurdities as Pan Am’s bid to acquire NWA, or investor groups leveraging ownership based on massive “junk bond” issues and bank loans.
Corporations which have endured withering proxy fights over the last few years are, of course, a matter of rapidly expanding public record. On many levels the investment community and major institutions specifically, have been aroused into a frenzy of so-called “shareholder” activism. This has been supplemented through mutual collaboration among the fund managers, imbuing them with make-or-break prerogative at the board room table One such cooperative pairing, forged initially during the battle for Texaco, recently surfaced again in a situation which broadly illustrates the issues at stake”.

In May of 1989, Honeywell Inc. management unsuccessfully fought an aggressive shareholder action intended to contain the company’s efforts to protect itself from hostile takeover. Spearheading the assault were two public pension funds and a group of Texas financial specialists. Together they not only succeeded in neutralizing the firm’s anti-takeover measures, they also demanded strategic changes in the firm’s approach to its business, including recommending divesture of assets and repurchase of stock.

Who, exactly, were Honeywell’s new, self-appointed business “advisors”? One was a 26 year old former takeover analyst at Goldman Sachs; another a Labor Department pension administrator who is a self-proclaimed shareholder’s rights advocate and institutional consultant. The California Public Employees Retirement System (CALPERS) and the Pennsylvania Public School Employee’s Retirement, (well acquainted through their successfully united efforts during the Texaco affair), rounded out the group. As of early May, these combined entities held 4.5% of Honeywell’s outstanding shares on behalf of their constituents. Yet their assertive action in winning the proxy fight with Honeywell management infused them with powerful leverage over the basic composition and direction of that company.

Who elected these people to this exalted and influential position? It’s certainly doubtful whether California’s public employees or Pennsylvania’s school workers even know who their fund managers are, let alone their qualifications to manage either their money or a business. Never-the-less, the “Fund Financiers” and a growing number of their contemporaries have assumed a power and authority based not on their own assets but on those of the pension contributors they are hired to serve.

What knowledge, experience and talent in their respective backgrounds qualify them to take major, long-term business decisions on behalf of a billion dollar corporation? Has any one of them actually run a multi-national business?

Does a career as a Labor Department administrator, take-over artist, or pension fund manager hone executive skills worthy of board room level influence over a company as diversified and globally significant as Honeywell? Is their “advice” good for Honeywell? Is it good for the country? (Honeywell is a leading defense contractor). More to the point, is it good for the working people whose jobs and future retirement security depend upon these decisions?

To be fair, Honeywell itself has not demonstrated strong performance of late under its existing leadership, having suffered significant losses in 1988. Yet its management is currently making a sincere effort to refocus and reposition itself against its strongest, most profitable opportunities. Whether successful or not in the end, it can be reasonably assumed their intentions are to preserve the firm as a profitable, individually managed and publicly owned entity over the long-term.

By contrast, it is difficult to imaging the moves recommended to date by the proxy group are strictly designed with the prolonged health and independence of the firm in mind. One might easily conclude, in fact, given the history of the players involved, that their objective is merely to enhance Honeywell’s viability as a takeover target.

The fundamental question in this and an escalating number of similar situations remains whether these recommendations are to the long-term benefit of the people who really made this power play possible, in this case California’s public employees and taxpayers and Pennsylvania’s educators. Were they consulted about the repercussions from a potentially dismantled Honeywell? Have they pondered over what happens to their own job security if Honeywell is forced to divest itself or divisions, subsidiaries, or manufacturing plants in California and Pennsylvania?

These are difficult, far-reaching considerations. Yet sadly, it is too frequently short-term profit that seems to drive today’s aggressive pension fund strategies. Though professing to be a “quintessential long-term investors”, the average fund officer is unlikely to be around and accountable by the time most contributors are collecting their pensions. He is apt to be far more concerned whether return on the assets he manages exceeds the markets’ this quarter or next; or, in the case of government officials, how such decisions will affect his political aspirations. It’s “bird in the hand” decision-making, built upon the realities of the business and the regulations which govern it.

As these investment professionals flex their expanding muscle and crow about their new-found clout, one must wonder---who’s looking out for the guy whose money is really on the table? How many of the funds’ beneficiaries truly reap the rewards from excess returns created by an LBO or corporate raid? Most pension plans offer fixed benefits to their participants anyway! Who, then, actually reaps the profits? The answer is obvious: It is the investment bankers, LBO/M&A specialists, corporate raiders, and pension fund manager engineering these deals that have the most to gain, along with the arbitragers and a few fortunate stock speculators.

Who loses? All of us, in some way. Jobs and careers are destroyed or displaced as mergers and/or highly leveraged firms are forced to sell off their assets to cover awesome debts, resulting in unemployment and closed factories. As taxpayers, we lose vast revenues as these firms finance themselves through debt instruments written off at public expense due to substantial interest accruals to tax free institutions. And, as a nation of producers, we suffer a debilitating corporate and investment mentality which rewards short-sighted, self-protective business thinking instead of commitment, planning, and reinvestment for the future. It is the legacy of too much power concentrated in too few hands.

Not surprisingly, this burgeoning usurpation of economic might has come under congressional scrutiny. The new Chairman of the Senate’s Budget Committee, Senator James Sasser, has taken an active interest in whether pension fund managers are prudently serving the interest of both their contributors and American industry as a whole. Even Secretary Brady of Treasury has reportedly been considering ways to encourage these managers to invest, with a more long-term view of the country. To date, however, Government is clearly nervous about the repercussions of taking serious action and risking tremors on Wall Street. Yet failure to address this issue squarely could result in a crisis on the magnitude of the savings and loan industry as we continue to officially sanction highly leveraged debt as a viable means to own and manage major businesses. Sooner or later the bill comes due, and it will be the taxpayers and true stockholders who are left holding it in the end.

Why not, instead, cut to the source of the issue? Why not ban voting entirely for institutional fund managers and arbitragers who invest other people’s money? It would compel a less proactive evaluation of investments, encouraging analysis based on real earning power over time rather than how they might be manipulated for quick gains. Secondly, eliminating proxies should help curb abuse of shareholder power for the benefit of risky LBO’s offering dubious benefit to employees and shareholders alike. Finally, if there is an issue of critical importance to pension fund shareholders, it will be the obligation of both the fund overseer and corporate management to marshal the vote directly. This means, of course, devising an efficient method of polling fund constituents on the virtues of whatever issue(s) are at hand. No small consideration, certainly, but hardly impossible given the agility of electronic communication today.

Concurrently, it is also time to review the rules of ERISA, with due consideration given to ways to stimulate long-term investing. Perhaps if pension managers’ incomes were tied to five and ten-year annuity payouts, based on their fund’s performance over that period, we might witness more attention paid to the broader implications behind institutional “macro-investments”. The shareholder can thus retain some control over his own benefit program through direct voting, while the pension manager can focus on that which he is presumably best equipped to do: manage investment allocations for long-term safety and growth.

Business as a whole would benefit, as well. Such natural obstacles to amassing vast proxy leverage might gradually impede the near desperate “urge to merge” afflicting corporate America today. Despite the jargon of Wall Street’s players, sound investing for the future of one’s business or personal life is not a game. Virtually every LBO or M&A deal arranged behind backroom doors eventually affects the lives of hundreds, even thousands of people whose opinions were never consulted.

Exposure to the facts and possible repercussions of a highly leveraged takeover might give shareholders pause before opting for the easy, short-term gain. Perhaps an aware constituency will respond as the Northwest Airlines pilots did to the financial harpies hovering over NWA Inc. In a national ad in the Wall Street Journal they warned: “We will not willingly place our future in the hands of an unknown party whose highly-leveraged acquisition plans can only be financed by the breakup value of all or part of this corporation”.

This frequently buffeted group is all too aware of the consequences of Wall Street gamesmanship. They’ve learned the hard way about leaving their fate in the hands of a few financial quick-turn artists. Similarly, as long as the public remains apathetic about its investment rights, it will be left to the few to assume authority and stir the pot at their discretion…and for their benefit.

If “shareholders’ rights” is to be truly meaningful and representative issue, it must be made applicable to the actual shareholders themselves. It should refer to their right to vote as they invest, rather than as a cover for blatant corporate extortion by a select few. It is time we expose the ironies at play here and uphold the principles upon which our nation and its commercial enterprise system were founded. When it’s other people’s money at stake, those other people ought to have the right to vote their choice!

 

Shepard Osherow. All Rights Reserved