Private companies -- a differenet story. Small business -- a different story. But when a company signs up to sell paper -- well -- paper is what they sell. And not even that anymore.
Like others I hoped and advocated for a removal of tax on dividends. Why? In may case because I know that dividends are a marking to market in some way. Those checks have to come from some real pot of money and not just imaginary puffery or a scondrels chicanery. Oh sure, even with the dividend CFO's will borrow from Peter at 2% to pay a dividend of 1%, still hiding that there's no real income to meet than payment.. I've heard, reliably, of people killed for an inside stock tip (oh more to it than that, but that's a succint synopsis -- looting dottering widows as well). I've say alongside a flying team of accountants in one of our major industrial colosi -- a division that was tossing money out the door in mismanagemnt, what were they there for? Not for business, for taxes! Making sure every aspect of accounting was aligned with maximal tax avoidance. That money could be wasted, as long as it kept taxes down.
I had a friend who was bank examiner -- an examiner of examiners. He left the business -- cocaine was rattling too many brains -- CFO's, examiners, accountants: as good as he was, he could not hold back a tide.
There was a major NY bank merger, two of the top eight .. why? Because the CEO of one was screwing the CIO of the other, so the story goes. Fiduciary duty, that.
A fundamental value of publicly traded stock, what is it? Graham and Dodd valuation? Can't hardly be done anymore.
Fiat money has swamped integrity and honest books out of the market.
I've been reading all week that George Bush is a liar, so I've become suspicious of one-sided judgement calls. Here's what I think: I think that if by some mechanism I could identify and talk to the people who were running the place, I would not hear, "Oh yeah, we we're throwing money out the windows! Hell, they told us to waste it, so we did."
I'm sorry, but I seriously doubt they would tell me that. They would be able to describe what they did with the money, and why they thought that would be a good idea, and whether or not the idea panned out the way they had hoped.
I've been around the block too many times not to know that the engineers think the marketing department does nothing but waste money, the manufacturing guys think the engineers never found an expensive, hard-to-get part they didn't like, and blah blah blah like that, all around the building. Half the world consists of people lobbing mortars over the cubes into the next department. If we all listened to that, we'd go blind.
Everybody's a frigging genius who knows exactly what to do next, except in his own job, where he knows damned well that life is hunt-and-peck.
And you believed it? Do you have any idea how many lawyers, accountants, investment bankers, regulatory authorities, and assorted consultants and pukes it would take to put a deal like that together? You have to get it past both boards, get the shareholders to vote for it, plus get four or five buildings full of state and federal naysayers to sign off on it.
And you're telling me that the deal was done over the pillow talk? That's somebody who got laid off in the deal throwing spears.