Showing posts with label recession. Show all posts
Showing posts with label recession. Show all posts

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Con Game

As I predicted here the Harpocrites have only one song sheet they sing from when it comes to the economy;the old neo-con tighten your belt.

Throne Speech warns of deficit
It pledged cost-control measures in Ottawa, including a squeeze on the budgets of many government departments and a law to limit the pay raises of civil servants.
"Hard decisions will be needed to keep federal spending under control and focused on the results," Ms. Jean read, following with the government's pledge to place grants and capital spending "under the microscope."
Mr. Layton argued that the Throne Speech adopted austerity measures and a laissez-faire approach, when intervention is needed. "I don't think you want to be taking ideas from the Mike Harris-era in Ontario and applying them to today's economic crisis," he said.


SEE:
Blue Throne Speech
Pinocchio Conservatives
Deja Vu


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Stiglitz On Market Fundamentalism

The market crisis exposes the failure of the neo-con agenda of deregulation, self regulation, privatization and contracting out. The real solution to this crisis as Stiglitz pointed out in 2006 is the socializtion of capital.

Joseph Stiglitz was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2001.

Gardels: What, then, is the ultimate impact of the Wall Street meltdown of market-driven globalization?

Stiglitz: The globalization agenda has been closely linked with the market fundamentalists -- the ideology of free markets and financial liberalization. In this crisis, we see the most market-oriented institutions in the most market-oriented economy failing and running to the government for help. Everyone in the world will say now that this is the end of market fundamentalism.
In this sense, the fall of Wall Street is for market fundamentalism what the fall of the Berlin Wall was for communism -- it tells the world that this way of economic organization turns out not to be sustainable. In the end, everyone says, that model doesn't work. This moment is a marker that the claims of financial market liberalization were bogus.


Financial markets are supposed to be a means to an end -- a more prosperous and stable economy as a result of good allocation of resources and better management of risk. But instead, financial markets didn't manage risk, they created it. They didn't enable America's families to manage the risk of volatile interest rates, and now millions are losing their homes. Furthermore, they misallocated hundreds of billions of dollar.
We will never achieve perfect stability of our financial markets, or of our economy. Markets are not self-correcting.

Gardels: What set of policies in the advanced countries can make globalization work?

Stiglitz: The prescription for making globalization work is what is generally called “the Scandinavian model.” That means high levels of investment in education, research and technology plus a strong safety net. That of course also entails, as in the Scandinavian countries, a highly progressive income tax.
Far from making these countries less competitive, it has made them more so. Though it may seem a contradiction to conservative ideologues who think cutting taxes is the answer to everything, the fact is that people are more willing to take entrepreneurial risks if they can count on a safety net and if they have the training to be innovative.
In Sweden, the social democrats who fashioned this policy have just been turned out of office. But we should not read that as a some kind of rupture in the social consensus. The new, more conservative government will only be about fine-tuning the model.


SEE:
Blue Throne Speech
Auto Solution
Not So Good News
Huh?
Super Bubble Burst
October Surprise Was The Market Crash
No Austrians In Foxholes
CRASH

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Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Blue Throne Speech

Why am I not surprised?

Throne speech warns of deficit, offers economic plan

No specifics in Tory economic plan

Because the neo-con agenda was about the failure of Keynesianism, except now all the capitalists and their political puppets are Keynesians when the market crashes. And when they applied their neo-con agenda it was during a temporary debt and deficit crisis of their own creation and it exasperated that into a full blown Reagan Recession. A little historical fact they fail to mention.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper moved closer to an about-face on economic policy today, outlining plans to stimulate growth that may run up a budget deficit after vowing to preserve surpluses.
A month after his Conservative Party government strengthened its hand in Parliament while falling short of a majority, Harper outlined his legislative agenda in a so-called Speech from the Throne, the ceremonial opening of a session. He pledged ``support'' for the country's car makers and plans to expedite infrastructure spending.
``In a historic downturn, it would be misguided to commit to a balanced budget in the short term at any cost,'' according to the text of the speech, which by tradition was read by Governor General Michaelle Jean in the country's Parliament, while Harper and other lawmakers listened. ``Ongoing'' deficits, though, would be ``unacceptable,'' Harper said.
Harper, who pledged ahead of his Oct. 14 re-election to maintain a balanced budget, told reporters last week his government may need to provide more stimulus to the world's eighth-largest economy to boost demand amid a global recession.



SEE:
Pinocchio Conservatives
Deja Vu
Business Unionism Offers No Solution To Capitalist Crisis

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Turn About

"It is not a secret that in a real way this problem began in the United States
with completely inadequate regulation of the financial sector," Harper said in
Winnipeg. "Unregulated financial markets do not work. Canada has
known that for a long time. We all knew that from events of many decades
ago."


My, my now our neo-con, republican lite, libertarian free marketeer PM is proclaiming praise for state regulation. Like I said before when capitalism crashes there are no Austrians in fox holes. And as our PM has admited come a capitalist melt down there are no neo-cons in foxholes either.



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Wage Controls

Here we go again the recession of the 1970's brought in wage controls under Trudeau. Then again in the ninties with the deficit and debt hysteria public and private sector workers faced assualts on their wages and benefits by provincial NDP and Conservative, and Federal Liberal governments. Now the Harpocrites are suggesting another attack on workers wages. While bailing out the bankers.



Flaherty also said the government is looking at controlling the rate of growth in the salaries of public servants, and is continuing with a strategic review of expenditures at all government departments.



We should not be surprised that Mike Harris's Finance Minister should talk about cutting wages for public sector workers. This was the neo-con aganeda during the ninties, carried out by Harris, Klein and Paul Martin. This is not new thinking, this is reactionary thinking. Attacking workers wages during a crisis of consumer capitalism will further entrench a recession which will then whipsaw into the private sector.



Flaherty says the equalization program itself isn’t threatened but spending growth needs to be controlled. "It’s a federal program, we will limit the growth of the program … it’s not sustainable otherwise," he said, I thought rather gravely.
The problem is, if transfers grow more slowly than inflation, provinces will face shortfalls. So less risky, politically at least, is cutting the civil service.
The Conservatives know there’s a standing constituency for strict control of public spending. And cuts can be doled out in ways that minimize the pain to particular constituencies.
That said, the last round of deep cuts was in the early 1990s, when Paul Martin and Jean Chretien put the brakes on federal transfers to the provinces and hacked away at programs. They cut the civil service and conditioned people to expect public spending cuts as the tactic of choice when times are tough.




While capitalist apologists bemoan any claw back of tax cuts to big business the Harpocrites now are suggesting attacks on workers wages.The reduction in transfer payments and discussions amongst the Premiers with Harper recently shows that the message has also been sent to these levels of government; prepare to roll back wages and benefits to your public sector workers. Anything to avoid a deficit. Class war has been declared by the Harpocrites.


SEE:

Pinocchio Conservatives

Deja Vu

Business Unionism Offers No Solution To Capitalist Crisis

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Friday, November 14, 2008

Huh?

NEW YORK, Nov. 13 /Standard Newswire/ -- The following text is of remarks by President Bush on Financial Markets and the World Economy:

History has shown that the greater threat to economic prosperity is not too little government involvement in the market - but too much.

Huh?

Hoover proves lack of government involvement led to the Great Depression. Here is Republican historical revisionism in it most blatant stupidity.Right wing American ideologues whether Republican, Conservative or Libertarian all try and avoid this obvious fact instead blaming the Smoot Hawley Act which was protectionist for the long Depression. In fact it was Hoovers hands off approach to the markets for three years that created the spiral downward. Smmot-Haweley and protectionist measures in Europe only agrivated that downward rush.

Bush, the Republicans, heck the liberals and the Libertarians in America live in a cloud cookoo land, one that imagines an artisan/farmer free market, free of monopolies, cartels and special business interests tied to the state. A time that is a fiction, a myth, of American Capitalism.

Ain't ever been such a creature nor is it the nature of American Capitalism and Imperialism.

Bush admits that capitalism is in a crisis; Faced with the prospect of a global financial meltdown
nations have responded with bold measures, and at Saturday's summit, we will review the effectiveness of our actions. This crisis did not develop overnight, and it will not be solved overnight.

And his solution is to keep on keeping on, capitalism is great, yep it has crisis, but heck its still the best system ever devised by humans.

This is a decisive moment for the global economy. In the wake of the financial crisis, voices from the left and right are equating the free enterprise system with greed, exploitation, and failure. It is true that this crisis included failures - by lenders and borrowers, by financial firms, by governments and independent regulators. But the crisis was not a failure of the free market system. And the answer is not to try to reinvent that system. It is to fix the problems we face, make the reforms we need, and move forward with the free market principles that have delivered prosperity and hope to people around the world.
Like any other system designed by man, capitalism is not perfect. It can be subject to excesses and abuse. But it is by far the most efficient and just way of structuring an economy. At its most basic level, capitalism offers people the freedom to choose where they work and what they do, the opportunity to buy or sell the products they want, and the dignity that comes with profiting from their talent and hard work. The free market system also provides the incentives that lead to prosperity – the incentive to work, to innovate, to save and invest wisely, and to create jobs for others. And as millions of people pursue these incentives together, whole societies benefit.


A nation that gave the world the I-Pod which is manufactured in China. Because as Reason magazine announced in 1999 that the world of the 21 Century was no longer America as the producer nation but America the consumer/service industry nation. A predicition that failed to understand that this would ultimately lead to a credit crisis, when a nation fails to produce value but rather lives on the value produced by others and lent to them.

Free market capitalism is far more than an economic theory. It is the engine of social mobility – the highway to the American Dream. It is what makes it possible for a husband and wife to start up their own business, or a new immigrant to open a restaurant, or a single mom to go back to college and begin a better career. It is what allowed entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley to change the way the world sells products and searches for information. And it is what transformed America from a rugged frontier to the greatest economic power in history - a nation that gave the world the steamboat and the airplane, the computer and the CAT scan, the Internet and the I-Pod.

Bush went on to defend capitalism, specifically post WWII American Capitalism, which itself is not a free market economy, but one of protectionism combined with state capitalism of the Military Industrial Complex. America subsidizes its aircraft manufacturerers, its agribusiness cartels, its auto industry, and has since WWII. To hear the President proclaim the glory of free markets and free peoples, is to also deny the hisorical reality which is American Capitalism. He further equates Japan's economic boom with American Capitalism, when in reality it is the result of State Capitalism. Japan used the Military Industrial Banking model for its development.

Ultimately, the best evidence for free market capitalism is its performance compared to other economic systems. Free markets allowed Japan - an island nation with few natural resources - to recover from war and grow into the world's second-largest economy. Free markets allowed South Korea to make itself one of the most technologically advanced societies in the world. Free markets turned small areas like Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan into global economic players. And today, the success of the world’s largest economies comes from their embrace of free markets.

South Korea which itself is an other model of State Capitalism, with Military and Finance capital under a pro-USA military dictatorship finally evolving into a manufacturing fordist economy modeled on the success of Japan. As for Singapore and Hong Kong these two islands of free market economies are ruled by dictators, proving that capitalism can function without democracy.

Meanwhile, nations that have pursued other models have experienced devastating results. Soviet communism starved millions, bankrupted an empire, and collapsed as decisively as the Berlin Wall. Cuba, once known for its vast fields of cane, is now forced to ration sugar. And while Iran sits atop giant oil reserves, its people cannot put enough gasoline in their cars.


Oh sure free markets really work well, except Cuba is rationing sugar because they cannot compete with American subsidized sugar and the American led economic boycott of their country. No free market here.

As for the Soviet Union it collapsed because it lost the military race under Reagans expansion of military spending, the USA Military Industrial Complex defeated the Soviet Unions Military Industrial Complex. Capitalism did not defeat Communism, rather the American model of State Capitalism proved to be more flexible than the autarchic command economy model used in the Soviet Union. Unfortunately China proves that this autarchic command model can be flexible, and now American Capitalism is beholden to China for its national debt.

But Bush was not the only one to proclaim that Capitalism may be melting down but its still not the problem. In listening to their Republican masters voice, our own Finance Minister and PM echoed Bush's doctrine that capitalism has not failed.

In a piece in the Financial Times, meanwhile, Mr. Flaherty too had rare kind words for the invisible hand, downplayed grand global financial architectural plans and suggested that reform -- like charity -- should begin at home. "The open market system did not fail in this crisis," he said.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is expected to join U.S. President George W. Bush in a defence of free-market capitalism and resistance to international calls for dramatic re-regulation of financial markets.


The ruling class recongizes that capitalism has once again failed, the bubble burst, the market crashed, what goes up must come down, the business cycle has not been superceded by globalization. The elephant in the room is socialism. The Republican Libertarian argument is to let the market decide, except contrary to their Libertarian dogma that market has come cap in hand to its State to bail it out. Opps. Guess real capitalism does not like the discipline of the marketplace. In attempting to not bail out the working class who is really suffering from this crisis with record home foreclosures, record unemployment and the very real threat of the meltdown of America's core manufacturing centre; Michagan, Bush and Harper need to couch the argument as a question of state intervention. The strawman they set up is to equate state capitalism, state intervention as socialism. Which it is not.

Capitalism cannot continue as it is. Temporary fixes like increased regulation, government bailouts etc. are not a solution to the crisis nature of capitalism. Socialization of capital is what is required. The fact that workers create captial, not business which only produces 'jobs', without workers capitalism collapses. This was clearly seen in Alberta last year during the height of the boom, when neither for love nor money could businesses find enough workers.
The result was many small businesses, you remember them they are the core of the economy according to Bush and Harper. closed.

Workers create captial, they circulate that capital by home purchases and by consuming the products they produce. They fund capital through their pension and benefit plans, pensions are called institutional investors in Wall Street, one of the largest sources of capital available currently.

The Canada Pension Plan fund said Wednesday it ended its latest quarter with a loss of more than $10 billion in the value of its assets, primarily because of the stock market turmoil that has battered share prices around the world.
But president and CEO David Denison said Canadians shouldn't worry that the loss will affect their current or future retirement benefits.
"This fund is designed to be able to withstand this short-term market volatility that we are living through, quite frankly better than any other fund in this country," Denison said in an interview with The Canadian Press.


Here is the true source of capital the working class blue, white and green collar, that produce and consume. And it is the means to change capitalism, the use of workers productive value matched by their pension funds and the corporate pension liabilities which are owed them, with capital from public pension funds, workers can then fund the corporations and run them themselves.

In Quebec there are labour funds as well as the Cassie Popular, the credit unions which have enormous reserves of workers capital to be able to use for promoting workers control of industry. In the rest of Canada workers whose credit unions are mimicing banks, need to take control of them and use this vast reserve of capital to invest in worker controled industries.

With the socialization of capital under workers control, the question of bail outs and regulation of the market become moot.

This is the socialism that Bush and Harper fear. This is why they distort the definintion of socialism equating it with state capitalism and command economies. Which socialism never was about. It is about the need to socialize captial to benefit those who create it; the working class.

It is the working class who are the real investors in capitalism, not those investors on Wall Street who play the market. The working class exists because of capitalism and capitalism exists because of the working class. As this crisis deepens and government intervention fails to stop the melt down, the only solution that will become clear is the need for socialization of capital under workers control.


SEE:
STFU 'W'
October Surprise Was The Market Crash
No Austrians In Foxholes
CRASH
The Return Of Hawley—Smoot
Canadian Banks and The Great Depression
U.S. Economy Entering Twilight Zone
What Goes Up...
Wall Street Mantra
Bank Run

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Monday, November 10, 2008

Super Bubble Burst


As Eric Janzen in the February issue of Harpers Magazine warned this is a super bubble that just burst.

A financial bubble is a market aberration manufactured by government, finance, and industry, a shared speculative hallucination and then a crash, followed by depression. Bubbles were once very rare—one every hundred years or so was enough to motivate politicians, bearing the post-bubble ire of their newly destitute citizenry, to enact legislation that would prevent subsequent occurrences. After the dust settled from the 1720 crash of the South Sea Bubble, for instance, British Parliament passed the Bubble Act to forbid “raising or pretending to raise a transferable stock.” For a century this law did much to prevent the formation of new speculative swellings.

The housing bubble has left us in dire shape, worse than after the technology-stock bubble, when the Federal Reserve Funds Rate was 6 percent, the dollar was at a multi-decade peak, the federal government was running a surplus, and tax rates were relatively high, making reflation—interest-rate cuts, dollar depreciation, increased government spending, and tax cuts—relatively painless. Now the Funds Rate is only 4.5 percent, the dollar is at multi-decade lows, the federal budget is in deficit, and tax cuts are still in effect. The chronic trade deficit, the sudden depreciation of our currency, and the lack of foreign buyers willing to purchase its debt will require the United States government to print new money simply to fund its own operations and pay its 22 million employees.


But unlike the South Sea Bubble or the Tulip Bubble, or even the Dot Com Bubble this one has brought capitalism to its global knees.

Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney underscored the deteriorating situation when he said Canada’s business conditions will worsen alongside other industrialized countries next year and the Canadian economy may slip into a recession for the first time since 1992.
“We are predicting very marginal growth in 2009,” Carney said in an interview with Bloomberg News, when asked if he thought a recession might happen. “By definition that’s close to negative growth, and if we have a balanced forecast you can see it going either side, so it’s a possibility."
Carney cut the Bank of Canada’s key interest rate to 2.25 per cent last month and said the world’s eighth-largest economy would shrink this quarter and stall in the first three months of 2009, just skirting the two quarters of contraction that most economists call a recession. He has said further rate cuts may be needed to prop up economic growth.
In Brazil, Flaherty also said the world is facing what appears to be a runaway economic downturn. He noted that the International Monetary Fund continues to lower its growth forecasts month by month. The IMF now predicts the major industrialized Group of 7 countries will fall into a recession next year - with the exception of Canada, which is forecast to post a minuscule 0.3 per cent growth.


For the leading spokespeople of capitalism to say they didn't see it coming well thats laughable. It could be excused as Hegelian black humour if the mouthpieces of capital were not so sincere in denying the obvious; recession and the dreaded follow through; depression.

Hegel remarks somewhere that history tends to repeat itself. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852)





SEE:


And Then There Was One


Concessions Don't Work




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Tuesday, November 04, 2008

Steady Eddie Runs Away

Alberta's farmer CEO Ed Stelmach has no plan to deal with economic meltdown so what does he do instead skips the first ministers meeting for an all expenses paid junket to Europe. Guess he missed the news that this is a global crisis and that Europe ain't open for business its businesses are collapsing. And typically the Tired Old Tories have no plan. Instead they put their heads in the sand and hope no-one notices their arses are in the air.


Alta. premier to skip first ministers' meeting
Trish Audette , Canwest News ServicePublished: Monday, November 03, 2008
EDMONTON - Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach is skipping national economic discussions in Ottawa next week in favour of going to Europe on a trade mission.
Stelmach explained Monday that his presence at the first ministers' meeting, hosted by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, is unnecessary.
The premier said organizers rejected having him connect to the Ottawa meeting by phone, so Alberta is sending a senior cabinet minister.
"We'll clearly identify the areas that we're concerned about," said Stelmach. "One of them is income trusts and another is where they cancelled all of the accelerated capital cost allowances for the oil and gas industry."


Premier needs to deliver plan that will restore hope
The premier has been disappointingly mum on his plans to restore confidence . . .
Danielle Smith, For The Calgary HeraldPublished: Tuesday, November 04, 2008
On Monday, the finance ministers met to talk about the next steps the federal government will take to address the pending economic crisis. What Premier Ed Stelmach now needs to do is set a date to provide an economic update of his own, so Albertans know what he intends to do about it.
The premier has been disappointingly mum on his plans to restore confidence among consumers and business owners. Meanwhile, Alberta is not likely to avoid the effects of what appears to be the beginning of a global economic slowdown.
Business confidence is at the lowest levels we've seen in nearly two decades.

For the last four weeks, starting on Oct. 6, CFIB has surveyed members on a weekly basis to get their views on how they expect the economy to perform over the next 12 months. The results are sobering.
Each week the small business outlook has looked a little dimmer, as massive shifts in commodity prices and the shrinking availability of credit disrupt investment plans. For the first time, the index is now virtually equivalent to its previous record low -- found in mid-1990 -- a time that coincided with a protracted recession.

For the last four weeks, starting on Oct. 6, CFIB has surveyed members on a weekly basis to get their views on how they expect the economy to perform over the next 12 months. The results are sobering.
Each week the small business outlook has looked a little dimmer, as massive shifts in commodity prices and the shrinking availability of credit disrupt investment plans. For the first time, the index is now virtually equivalent to its previous record low -- found in mid-1990 -- a time that coincided with a protracted recession.

But the most important question Taft levelled, which still appears to have no clear answer, is: "As the world economy staggers to a halt, what is this government's plan to protect the wealth and jobs of Albertans?"
Stelmach responded that he would dip into the $7.7 billion stability fund if he needed to, but that doesn't address the core problem. The core problem is the Alberta government spends too much.
This year, the province increased operating spending by 9.7 per cent and capital spending by 22 per cent.
Not long after the budget was delivered, the province threw out its surplus management strategy (which was supposed to dedicate one-third of surpluses to infrastructure, one-third to infrastructure maintenance, and one-third to savings) and announced it would spend an additional $4 billion, on carbon sequestration and public transit.



Tories 'handing' U.S. oilsands upgrading jobs
Premier blames federal government
Renata D'Aliesio, Calgary HeraldPublished: Tuesday, November 04, 2008
Opposition leaders accused Alberta's premier on Monday of standing idly by as the United States siphons oilsands upgrading jobs from the province.
In question period, Liberal boss Kevin Taft seized on new industry warnings that Alberta is on track to upgrade only half of its bitumen production, far short of Premier Ed Stelmach's goal of 75 per cent.
Taft listed a litany of American upgrader projects designed to process the province's tar-like bitumen, including plans slated for Indiana, Minnesota and Montana.
He said the Alberta government should be worried that $30 billion worth of oilsands projects, including upgraders and processing plants, has been shelved due to the global financial turmoil.
"This government is on the brink of handing control of Alberta's wealth to the United States," Taft charged.



Unintended consequences: discounted Alberta land
Crescent Point says royalties deflated prices
Dan Healing, Calgary HeraldPublished: Saturday, October 25, 2008
It's a bold investment strategy tinged with more than a little irony -- Calgary oil executive Scott Saxberg, a vocal opponent of higher Alberta oil royalties unveiled a year ago this week, says his Saskatchewan-focused company is going to aggressively bid for land rights in this province.
"We are now looking at lands in Alberta because we believe, based on the way royalty rules are, Alberta is basically giving away their land for free," the president and chief executive of Crescent Point Energy Trust told the Herald in an interview this week.




SEE

The Economist On Alberta's Fair Share
Still not getting our due
Ed's Politics Of Fear
Nationalize The Oil Patch
Royalties Pay For Jobs

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Monday, November 03, 2008

Pension Rip Off


Canada's corporations are crying the blues again about the fact that they have underfunded liabilities regarding their pension obligations to their workers. While they may have a point that the government discourages them from putting extra into their pension funds, the fact is that they use this excuse to not max out their share of their pension responsibilites. Much like the government itself with its public sector plans, which are paid for by employers and employees, but the government never puts in its share, instead it uses its general funds to account for its future liablities, which of course gets it into trouble during periods of economic downturn and when the state runs up deficits and gets into debt as it did in the ninties.
That being said while corporations could benefit from legislative changes to the tax code, the fact remains that they would still prefer to invest in stocks and to pay their CEO's lucrative salaries and pay generous dividends to their shareholders before they invest in their own workers. Surprise, surprise. Now that market has melted down they cry the blues about not having paid their share into their future obligations to those who produce their wealth; their workers.