esp. for Alex...was: Still More Snot chapter 2....The Snot Report..... 537

On Tue, 22 Mar 2005, Kamal R. Prasad

Contrary to your otherwise well written sentence above, the better (maybe best) sentence is that 'truth is in the eyes of the beholder' and what might be black for you might be white for me, or vice versa. A third party might see the gray, or not even care. I find that most people's buttessment of a situation is highly dependent on how that situation affects them. And, thus 'truth' depends on perspective, and is not an absolute.

However, coming back to offshoring, you see, your perspective (that its good) depends on reasons that you gave which include "its the priviledge of private equity" and reasons that you have made little public acknowledgement that its good for India but you have shown a small amount of appreciation for the fact that offshoring has had a negative effect on the middle clbutt in the USA. You have concentrated on how offshoring is good for business (a separate issue from whether it is good for society), but in the end, I always ask "who is making the most money from this" and "is there more good than bad being done" and the answers, respectively, are: the executives and the product of layoffs times salary is always going to be higher than the product of hires times salary or else a company goes broke. That almost always requires that hire salary total has to be less and that means ship the job to a country where the suits can get away with this. In the short run it may benefit the company economically, but in the long run its a race to the bottom for everyone else.

Politicians, the next group of evil people besides suits, do have a way to speak with forked toungue but it is unfortunate that more people actually accept these lies as a result of normal human psycholgical shortcomings, unstoppable patriotism, and the mbutt herd instinct.

How do you

I think more people will be emotionally involved in: i) fighting a bad guy (Saddam Husein) as labeled by OUR top leader, ii) what this will cost in terms of rest of sons (soldiers) and disruption to family lives in the USA, and farther down the list will be the cost to taxpayers. Beyond the oil companies are the defense contractors who will be seeing a very major portion of that $200 billion flow into their bank accounts.

The checks and balances are weak. I think its one or both of two things: i) they are so screwed up internally they don't know what the hell is going on, and ii) they are juggling the books to benefit themselves in ways that are shady but otherwise perfectly legal.

Nah, you're wrong.

Nah, its the pressure of the BOD. There are very few shareholder lawsuits (I read the WSJ daily) but lots of fights in boardrooms if things don't work. The BOD hires and fires the CEO. Not the shareholders. I've said this before.

Not true. There are many examples (factual) where the bonuses come anyway even if deliver does not happen. Carly Fiorina got fired. Got her paycheck, got her bonus, got her stock options. Total 42 mil. Its been in the papers.

Risk yes, but lots of times they don't lose their job either. Its a fact.

What neither the current CEOs nor you (if you replace them)

Now, this is interesting and partly true but "economic climate" is controlled by OTHER companies, too. Compebreastion can and actually has been controlled by so-called anti-compebreastive behavior on the part of companies. Monopoly formation, price-fixing, etc., still goes on, today.

The CEO is just someone hired to steer the ship

False. Companies are continually lobbying congress for laws favorable to the company, special no-bid contracts (eg. Haliburton-Cheney, etc), trade sanctions if possible, govt subsidies, tax breaks, and quite a few other things.

I would rather be a CEO than a politician. I hate to lie more than do things that would be bad. But, I'd prefer to be a CEO in a company with a stable economic infrastructure and no need to lay off people or treat them badly.

Politicians need campaugn finance

Right.

What I have read of US history, they have not changed for a lot longer than that.

The invasion has nothing to

I think this is at least partly true, maybe mostly true. But along with that is expansion of US interests, US pressure. Also, to make Haliburton bigger.