Recently in United States Category

There is an article in the current issue of Rolling Stone entitled "Was the 2004 Election Stolen?" by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The link to the rolling stone article is here, the full text of the article (with footnotes) is included on the entry page.

OK, so the smell of the Google scandal may not have reached everyone. I've therefore resolved to dissect the damn thing, to really reveal the malodorous rot, if only because it lays bare the cynicism built into capitalism and the pathetic cowardice of experts on economics in failing to expose this, just as they let Enron and the Tech Bubble proceed apace, saving their recriminations for when the looters had disappeared...

So... Google is currently a privately owned company, consisting of roughly 240 million shares of stock which, when 20 million were secretly (and thus in violation of SEC regulations) used to pay about 1000 companies and consultants, were valued by the company at about $3 each. So by their own measure, the company is worth about $720 million. In other words Google's not worthless, obviously, in fact the company made a whopping $100 million or so in the last year, by selling about $1.4 billion in online ad sales (so their profits were about 7% of sales, the rest of that revenue, or $1.3 billion, went somewhere, to run the company, pay the CEO, etc...) and their prospects are not bleak, just challenging.

Who owns it now? Different people and companies own different amounts. Both of the founders own an amount in the 10's of millions, Yahoo owns a few million, each of the venture capital firms which got Google off the ground as a company with $2 million each own 25 million shares, and of course, 1000 other companies and consultants own on average 20,000 shares each. Then of course, the corporation itself owns a certain number of shares.

Google's much ballyhooed IPO*, or initial public offering, will be offering 20 million shares from the company's stock, but will also include about 20 million more being sold by some of the companies and individuals who own their own shares.

Here's where the magic is about to happen...

Remember, Google is a company worth less than a billion dollars--let's say it's made up of 240 million three-dollar bills. 20 million of these bills will be sold to the public at $108-$135 a piece. Let's round it down to $100 for simplicity. On the side, another 20 million shares will be sold at roughly the same price by insiders. So one day after it's IPO, here's what the world will look like (roughly):

The public will have given Google $2 billion for 20 million shares of stock. They will also have given a handful of insiders another $ 2 billion for their Swiss bank accounts.

The public will own 40 million shares for which they paid $ 4 billion. $2 billion was pocketed by insiders, but the other $2 billion is now held by the company as cash, in addition to the rest of their assets, in effect tripling their actual value as a company (assets minus liabilities) from the day before to about $3 billion. You might be wondering why the public paid $4 billion to be owners of one-sixth of a company worth $ 3 billion... well, let's step back for a second.... The actual value of the company has nothing to do with its value in real life, but instead its value on paper, i.e. the stock price multiplied by the number of shares, in our case, about $24 billion. Wow! Did you see that? We just turned a pile of 240 million three-dollar bills into a company worth more than General Motors!

It gets better though, for the insiders. Remember, they only sold 20 million of the company's 240 million shares. They still own the rest! They managed to turn their sub $1 billion company into a $24 billion behemoth! At scheduled intervals, they will sell off their shares so long as there are buyers, until they've turned all their three-dollar bills into gold. Pretty soon, people will catch on and the share price will float, or shoot, down to a more realistic price level determined by the market. If annual profits remain at around $100 million, then the average historical price to earnings ratio (20) would suggest a fair market value of about $2 billion.

*The Google IPO was the brainchild of the following two venture capital firms:

http://www.kpcb.com/team/
http://www.sequoiacap.com/partner_matrix.asp

I researched this article with Google. :)

Yes, it's as bad as it sounds...

Arianna Huffington condemns Bush and Co. to eternal damnation:

"Colin Powell believed in his heart that war with Iraq could -- indeed, should -- be avoided. But instead of making a principled stand, he made like a good soldier and fell into line. He was further out of the war loop than the ambassador from the home country of 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers -- but when the president asked him to carry his sample vial of anthrax at the United Nations, Powell was so flattered he dutifully set out to hoodwink the world.

In Dante's "Inferno," deceivers are sentenced to have their souls encased in flames, hypocrites are forced to wear a cloak weighted with lead, and those who use their powers of persuasion for insidious ends are doomed to suffer a continual fever so intense that their body sizzles and smokes like a steak tossed on a George Foreman grill. Maybe Satan will give Powell a three-afflictions-for-the-price-of-one deal. "

JOHN KERRY PANDERS TO WEALTHY LATIN AMERICAN EXPATRIATES FLEEING THE RESULTS OF THEIR CORRUPTION AND EXPLOITATION.

vote nader.

TWICE.

Wesley Clark wrote an op-ed for the Crimson. In this op-ed, Clark says:
".... and today, more than 400 brave men and women have paid the price."

later, in the article:
"we need to change course. We need a president who does more than talk about success. We need a president with a plan to achieve it. I do not just say this; I have done it. In the war in Kosovo we achieved our goals without the loss of a single American soldier"

So, when Clark thinks of the consequences of the war, he sees only American troops, not the devastation of an entire country and thousands of people killed or maimed by the invasion. And, he is proud of Kosovo because the aims were achieved without American casualties. What about Yugoslavian casualties?

This selfish, ethnocentric attitude is precisely what allowed this war to happen. When will people like Clark, Bush and Clinton acknowledge that other parts of the world are inhabited by human beings. These human beings have a culture and political structures and a history -- that the 'Arab mind' cannot be understood, because there is no 'Arab mind'.

As far as the human consequences of the war go, body counts mean nothing because it is impossible to quantify the devastation caused by the war. Tabulating casualties is disgusting and voyeuristic. But, if we are ever foced into doing so, we must keep the following principles in mind:

1. Either, count only Iraqi civilians
2. If American troops are counted, Iraqi troops must be counted. About 30,000 of them perished.

Any sentence that begins with "400 American troops and 10,000 Iraqi civilians" is racist, whether or not the author of the statement is aware of the deeply offensive assumptions inherent in the sentence structure.

P.S: When I re-read what I wrote above, I realise how angry I was when I wrote it! But, anyway Trygve tells me that, at Kirkland House today, Wesley Clark supported 'The Israeli Wall'. Among his many reasons, one was : "Palestinians and other terrorists should not be allowed to enter Israel".

Eric Hobsbawm describes this eloquently. [I'll put the exact quote here by evening!]. The birth of democracy meant the end of political honesty. Which politician was likely to tell his voters that they were foolish and incapable of deciding their future for themselves?

So, a bourgeois democracy typically throws up some scum -- the people who are most willing to cozy up to the powers, have the least integrity, are the most corrupt, the most vicious etc. These people then make pious statements and expect others to believe them!

So, as we all know Mr Bush imposed tariffs on imported steel. The EU held a gun to his head and threatened to slap billions of dollars of sanctions. So, Mr Bush repealed the tariffs. But hear the man speak:

George Bush: "US steel jobs have been given another chance to compete."
George Bush:"These safeguard measures have now achieved their purpose and, as a result of changed economic circumstances, it is time to lift them"

Our beloved Robert Zoellick(who performs the arm-twisting on behalf of the US at the WTO) exceeded Mr. Dubya:
"US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick said the tariff decision had been made independently of the threat of retaliation by the EU. "[Emphasis added]

See the BBC story for some more hilarious quotes!

I was shocked, when I discovered that Columbus Day was celebrated in America. In this Znet article Mitchel Cohen considers the celebration of Thansgiving. The article points out the Piligrims were fleeing religious persecution in Europe, but they immediately used religion to justify their persecution of others. Mitchel also notes the strong contrast between the behaviour ot the natives who were extremely hospitable and shared everything they had and the behaviour of the colonizers who, driven by an insatiable greed for land, exterminated the 'Indians'.

This article raises important questions. First, there is the question of history. How has the American intellegentsia suppressed discussion of history? This includes not only the history of the US mainland, but also the history of US actions throughout the world. Second, the welcoming behaviour of the natives raises the issue of how social structures and values are linked to the economic system.