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Our Financial Future: Infinite Greed Meets a Funny Thing Called Karma
Our Financial Future: Infinite Greed Meets a Funny Thing Called Karma
All those angered by the mere question of the viability of this predatory pillaging in the name of capitalism are incapable of even admitting this cultural crisis exists.
Somewhere along the line, we lost the ability to distinguish between earning a profit and maximizing private gain by any means, i.e. Infinite Greed. If you insist on making this distinction now, you anger a lot of people, as it blows the capitalist cover of Infinite Greed.
If you make the distinction between earning a profit and maximizing private gain by any means, then you realize the status quo is neither sustainable nor good: it is unsustainable and evil. This angers everyone who has rationalized their investment in (and defense of) an evil system, because, well, it’s hard to feel all warm and fuzzy about your choices if the phony facade falls and the evil of the system you’ve defended is starkly revealed.The distinction between earning a profit and maximizing private gain by any means angers not just the few benefiting from the useful delusion that Infinite Greed is simply profit on overdrive; it seems to anger everyone who believes the Status Quo of burning mountains of coal to power towel warmers, sitting in traffic burning petrol two hours a day and central banks enriching the already wealthy is not just sustainable but gol-darned good.
Every enterprise must earn a profit to survive. A worker-owned collective must earn a profit, as it needs money to reinvest in the business and reward those who have invested their capital (human, social, financial, intellectual, etc.) in the enterprise.
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Oil Majors’ Profits Take A Beating
Oil Majors’ Profits Take A Beating
The first quarterly earnings reports since the collapse of oil prices are in and the numbers show a significant deterioration in profits for the oil majors.
Royal Dutch Shell went first on January 29, revealing a big jump from the same quarter a year ago, but down from the third quarter of 2014. In fact, Shell announced that it would cut $15 billion in spending over the next few years, an about-face from just a few months ago when it stated that it would leave capital expenditures unchanged in 2015. Shell’s CEO, concerned about the poor state of oil and gas markets, said that it may even consider withdrawing itself from significant assets held around the world, retrenching and focusing on North America.
On the same day, ConocoPhillips also reported gloomy numbers. It plans onslashing 2015 spending by an additional 15 percent, which comes after a December announcement of a 20 percent cut in expenditures for the year.
Related: Schlumberger To Retake Oil Services Crown With New Deal
Chevron followed that up on January 30, posting its worst showing in five years. The $3.5 billion in earnings for the fourth quarter of 2014 was 30 percent lower than from the previous year. The California-based oil major says that it will trim spending by 13 percent.
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Oil Dinosaurs Face Extinction: State Oil Companies and the Meteor-Strike of Low Oil Prices
Oil Dinosaurs Face Extinction: State Oil Companies and the Meteor-Strike of Low Oil Prices
State-owned oil companies that don’t slash expenses to align with revenues and boost critical investment in the infrastructure needed to maintain production will suffer financial extinction.
Domestic and international energy companies are responding to the 50% decline in the price of oil by doing what’s necessary to remain in business: they’re slashing payroll, postponing capital investments, delaying new projects and soliciting price cuts from suppliers and subcontractors.
This is the discipline of profit-driven capitalism: if expenses exceed revenues, profits vanish, losses pile up, capital contracts and eventually the company runs out of cash (and access to credit) and closes down.
Unfortunately for state-owned oil companies, the feedback of expenses, losses and access to credit are superceded by the need to feed hordes of parasites: the state-owned company exists not to generate profits but to fund large payrolls and support state officials and cronies.
Stripped of the discipline of markets and profits, state-oil companies exist to serve the interests of the state’s Elites and their cronies and favored constituents. As a result, critical infrastructure has fallen into obsolescence, capital investments have been hollowed out and the expertise needed to maintain production has eroded.
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oftwominds-Charles Hugh Smith: Here’s What’s Wrong with Corporate America–and the U.S. Economy
oftwominds-Charles Hugh Smith: Here’s What’s Wrong with Corporate America–and the U.S. Economy.
Will we ever tire of navigating the multiple layers of intermediaries between the customer and the provider, while corporate profits soar to unprecedented heights?
The second example is home appliances purchased at a Big Box retailer. Here’s the list of interactions between Corporate America and the customer:
