Old
America Is Sinking
By David Truskoff
20 August, 2007
Countercurrents.org
The
Ford Motor Company filed its 2007 proxy statement on 4/5/2007with the
Securities and Exchange Commission. It stated the following:
" William Clay Ford,
Jr., executive chairman and former chief executive officer, served as
CEO from Jan. 1, 2006 until Sept. 1, 2006, and received no cash salary,
bonus or other awards for 2006 pursuant to his May 2005 compensation
arrangement to forego any new compensation until the company’s
Automotive sector achieves sustainable profitability. His 2006 compensation
totaled $10,497,292. The expense related to his previous options and
other stock-based awards totaled $9,950,585, and an increase of $152,859
in the present value of accrued pension benefits, are included in Mr.
Ford's 2006 compensation. Mr. Ford received other compensation totaling
$393,848, which included $185,232 in value for required use of the corporate
aircraft and $85,708 for security.
Alan Mulally, president and
chief executive officer, served as president and CEO from Sept. 1, 2006
for the remainder of the year, and earned $666,667 in salary. His 2006
compensation totaled $28,183,476. Mr. Mulally received a bonus of $18,500,000
which consisted of a $7,500,000 hiring bonus and $11,000,000 as an offset
for forfeited performance and stock option awards at his former employer.
The expense for his options and other stock-based awards totaled $8,682,376,
and includes cost recognized in 2006 for a $5 million stock option grant
that he received in March 2007 as part of his 2007 option grant. Mr.
Mulally received other compensation totaling $334,433, which included
$172,974 for required use of the corporate aircraft, and $55,469 for
relocation costs and temporary housing."
Ford Motor Company announced
on Monday January 4, 2006 its "way forward" plan to slash
up to 30,000 manufacturing jobs, cut 4,000 salaried employees and shutter
14 factories -- "These cuts are a painful last resort, and I'm
deeply mindful of their impact," Chairman and CEO Bill Ford said.
"They're going to affect many lives, many families, and many communities."
The President of the Ford
Motor Company Alan Mulally, also made an astounding statement regarding
the tragic layoffs of 30 thousand workers and the closing of 14 plants.
The statement must have been
born out of more than a hundred thousand dollars worth of education
and years of on the job training. It was a statement that needed a drum
roll introduction. He said, "What we (Ford) needs to do now is
create a product that the public will buy." As my ten year old
grandson would say...DUH. The simple fact is that the US auto industry
has been on cruise control for decades and do not know how to get off
it.
In defining the meaning of
his phrase," democracy first," which was in answer to those
reactionaries who shouted, "America first," Henry Wallace
said, " democracy and freedom also means, that the businessman
can be free from the fear of those monopolies and international cartels
which use unfair practices in buying from him and selling to him or
competing with him."
Beginning this new century,
in my home State of Connecticut, there are only a few American owned
grocery stores left. The food industry is controlled mostly by out of
country, tax evading, investor, holding- companies. Royal Ahold NV a
Dutch based company owns hundreds of Stop and Shop Supermarkets in New
England, however at this writing they are being called the Enron of
the food industry because of their exposed accounting manipulations
and the entire house of cards is very shaky. A spokesman for the prosecution
office in Amsterdam said the investigation focused on the possible "falsification
of documents" and the "publication of possible false figures
in company reports". In The U.S. District Court in Maryland, Royal
Ahold NV, the Dutch grocery giant, agreed to settle a securities fraud
class action lawsuit and pay $1.1 billion to shareholders for overstating
profit. 800 Stop and Shop workers were laid off. The workers hurt by
that scandal are mostly the poor that Clinton "Freed from the welfare
rolls", and have no savings or even health benefits to fall back
on.
On April 11, 1947, President
Truman took the sledgehammer to the braces strengthening anti trust
laws put into place by the Roosevelt administration to prevent another
depression. Truman first announced the "anti Trust group would
concentrate its efforts on major violations of anti trust laws while
the Federal Trade Commission would increase it’s effectiveness
on an industry wide basis instead of on an individual complaint."
He then fired Roosevelt appointee Wendall Berge, Assistant Attorney
General; in charge of the anti trust division. The New York Times reported,
"Berge has been one of the most aggressive trust busters to hold
that position, but it was whispered that he was too much of the old
"New Deal " to be comfortable or effective in the new era."
Ahold would never have been able to capture such a large segment of
the food industry under a man like Wendall Berge.
It is easy to compare the
failure of our automobile manufacturing business to our short -sighted
foreign policy. For too many years Detroit has paid more attention to
the rate of return for their investors than they have to the creation
of a better product. When more stock went on the market, they increased
the rate of return to the investor by cutting costs on the product development
and manufacture. They became immersed in the paper business instead
of the car business. Selling the stock (paper) became paramount instead
of developing a good product. Dividends are what sell stock. Cost cutting
(layoffs) and cheaper production costs pay dividends.
The Japanese did just the
reverse. They knew that in the end, the better product would sell more
and the investors would be much better off. American consumers were
not fooled. They bought the better product. A few Americans got very
rich maneuvering the paper on Wall Street and tens of thousands of American
workers were laid off.
From 1948 to the present,
American foreign policy has been only with the investors in mind. Whether
you are viewing Mexico, or any South American country and certainly
Eastern Europe the emphasis is on the resource drain of those countries.
The poverty rate grows in every country where American dollars are invested
to steal resources, and in America, another million personal bankruptcies
will be filed before the decade ends. We are producing less and less
product and stealing more and more. We are sending more jobs out of
the country every day.
In India for example we have
created a high tech elite with jobs from both the US and Britain. One
would think that it is a great arrangement for the Indian people, but
while we continue to lay off workers here, we also continue to increase
poverty there. Taxes go up for the poor, prices go up, and the cast
system flourishes. A small fraction of the population being paid what
Americans would call low wages control political decisions that are
supposed to benefit them.
There was not one word from
any politician in the fall of 2006 on how this entire philosophic steel
plate can be melted down. It would require a revolutionary structural
change. There does not seem to be any leader on the horizon with the
inclination, the courage or the mandate to radically re-direct the economy
domestically, or to seek the wellspring of a creative foreign policy.
On March 17,1965 Willard
F. Mueller who was the director of the bureau of Economics on the Federal
Trade Commission said, "With Corporate profits the highest in history
and still rising and stock prices reaching near record levels the prospect
is for continuing pressure for mergers." Dr. Mueller was testifying
before the Senate anti trust sub-committee. He told them that since
the end of the pre Korean war recession of 1948 to 1949 there has been
a post Korean war increase of 17% of total manufacturing assets held
by the 200 hundred largest manufacturing companies and the proportion
amounted to 54.6% in 1962. If this trend continues," he said, "
the two hundred largest companies will own two thirds of all industrial
assets by 1975."
The trend did continue for twenty more years.
April 8,1997, the Wall Street
Journal announced, "Fortune 500 firms list 23% rise in profits."
It then goes on to say that they have, "Restructured, re-engineered,
re-financed, down sized, laid off, split up and merged their way to
prosperity." The key phrase is "their prosperity." Trickle
down mind set cannot separate the "Their" from the country’s
prosperity.
They did not do it by manufacturing
better products. Consumers are doing a similar thing. They are merging
one credit card to another credit card and sinking deeper, and deeper
in debt. In February of 1996, the consumer debt was an astounding $1.21
Trillion. It has continued to grow like a teen ager on steroids. We
are a paper economy, or perhaps I should say a plastic economy with
total debt that has now reached $48 Trillion.
The programmed moguls in
the boardrooms obviously feel that when America bounces on the bottom
they will not drown with the rest of us. Money makes them feel immune
even to that. They are still immersed in the paper game so on August
4, 2007 Ford announced it is recalling 3.6 million passenger cars, trucks,
sport utility vehicles and vans to address concerns about a cruise control
switch that has led to previous recalls based on reports of fires. They
had previously recalled nearly 6 million vehicles beginning in January
2005 because of engine fires linked to the cruise control systems in
trucks, SUVs and vans.
www.erols.com/suttonbear
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