Posted on Evans Liberal Politics, June 6, 2010, by Paul Evans.
This is just a little informed speculation, nothing more.
I'll keep this short and sweet. It seems to this writer that the whole corporate world is in collusion to make the world's people into worker drones and wring the last little bit of money any person might have extra away from them. I honestly think the corporate world is in collusion to separate ordinary people from their money, or rather what's left of it. I think the process is highly organized and highly sophisticated.... as sophisticated as the software involved in investment banking's program trading. And I believe the Obama administration, while somewhat of a voice of reason in the whole process, is nonetheless complicit.
I don't think the average rich person or corporate CEO gives a damn whether you or I or anyone else lives or dies. I think money is a religion that these people bow down to.
Let's look at the actions of some principals in this whole business, BP, CEO Tony Hayward and investment bank Goldman Sachs.
Last year (2009) Goldman Sachs gave out $23 billion in bonuses to its executives. Also keep in mind that $19.2 billion of the money taxpayers bailed out AIG for was money owed to Goldman, so that a large portion of the AIG bailout was simply profit handed over to Goldman Sachs. Consider if you will for a minute, this $23 billion in bonuses. We (you and I the taxpayers, brother) gave Goldman $5.6 billion as an emergency bailout at the end of Bush's reign of error in 2008. Officially Goldman lost $53 billion in 2008. Can't let the poor rich CEO's suffer, so we bailed them out directly and indirectly through AIG.
This is to say nothing of the money we have no evidence of that I would bet my left nut Goldman and the others were handed over by the Fed in "off balance sheet transactions" we have no direct knowledge of (yet).
Now Goldman Sachs owns Burger King. They were cited up through 2009 179 times for failure to pay their Burger King workers even the minimum wage. In 2008 immediately after we handed over the $5.6 billion, Goldman proceeded to hand over $6.8 billion to bonuses for its executives. Yet they refuse to pay their hourly Burger King workers even the shameful minimum wages they fought so hard to prevent and work hard to keep from being raised to a level one can live on in America. Burger King workers routinely work 70 to 90 hours a week and make an average of $14,414 a year, but this is for 70 to 90 hours a week, and they do NOT pay them overtime. The Federal poverty line for a family of three in 2009 was $17,600.
Let's just consider for a minute that $23 billion in bonuses for 2009. That is enough to send 460,000 people to Harvard, buy health insurance for 1.7 million people, or (get this) buy 115 million iPhones priced at $199.99 each. And Goldman's tax rate? Thanks to the jurisdictions they are established in, Goldman pays just about 1 percent of it's income in taxes.
The preceding was just by way of explaining to you a little about money and greed, if you weren't totally aware of the game yet. But I think that as ordinary Americans we're beginning to understand "the game" quite well. You and I, brother, don't matter. We don't matter unless our bottom line is basically over a million dollars, and for the people that really matter, that's chump change.
Let's take our knowledge of just what's going on and apply it to BP and the Gulf oil spill. What do we know?
We know that even President Obama, who is fully immersed as a supporter of corporatism, defacto, while he talks a good game of being for all Americans, is now a little miffed at BP. Apparently as of the 4th, BP had taken steps to protect its profits big time. First they made a dividend distribution to their shareholders, which is pretty tacky, to say the least, given the fact that they should be throwing all available resources at the Gulf oil spill right now.
"I want BP to be very clear," President Obama said. "They have moral and legal obligations here in the Gulf for the damage that has been done," he said. He also said he didn't want BP "nickling and diming" fishermen and other Gulf residents who have legitimate business losses because of the spill.
But these are words, and words are easy to come up with. Concrete actions -- and I mean definite actions that eat into BP's bottom line -- are harder for Congress and the Obama administration to force through, aren't they? Why? Because Congress and the people who run the government are rich themselves and beholden in obvious ways to Wall Street and the whole corporate world. Because really, you and I - ordinary Americans - don't matter to these people.
In recent months, because of the global economic slowdown, there has been a glut of gasoline supply relative to demand. In my town, Wooster, Ohio, gas was at one point about ten days ago down to $2.36 a gallon. This really must have been eating into the energy companies profit margins, right? Can't stand that for very long.... Three nights ago gas jumped up to $2.65 a gallon here.... and you know and I know that this is just the start. You can bet any amount you have, which likely isn't much any more, that the supply/demand imbalance is being corrected day by day. In fact, the Deepwater Horizon spill and moratorium on new drilling is helping that, isn't it?
It is as though, if Deepwater Horizon weren't an unavoidable accident, it would have been necessary to cause something like that.
What actions were taken by people in the financial world in the weeks prior to the Gulf oil spill?
From an untraceable commenter (tried to trace them unsucessfully) here on Evans Liberal Politics we get that "Goldman Sachs sold 44% of its BP holdings on March 31st, 20 days before the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico." And what was BP CEO Tony Hayward doing about this time? Well among other things he was making comments publicly like "Come on, this is America, there will be frivolous lawsuits." And there is "no evidence" of burgeoning oil plumes. Would YOU trust this man?
Is or is not it pretty suspicious that BP chief Tony Hayward sold shares weeks before oil spill, Telegraph.co.uk, June 5, 2010, by Jon Swaine and Robert Winnett.
The chief executive of BP sold £1.4 million of his shares in the fuel giant weeks before the Gulf of Mexico oil spill caused its value to collapse.
But Goldman and CEO of BP Tony Hayward seemed to be protecting themselves, as if they somehow knew that BP's stocks were going to take a big hit. Am I right?
And what has BP done just lately to protect the parent company from overall liability and costs associated with the spill?
See BP hives off 'toxic' Gulf spill operation to dilute anti-British feeling in US, The Guardian.co.uk, June 4, 2010, by Terry Macalister, excerpt quoted verbatim:
BP is to hive off its Gulf of Mexico oil spill operation to a separate in-house business to be run by an American in a bid to isolate the "toxic" side of the company and dilute some of the anti-British feeling aimed at chief executive Tony Hayward, the company said today.
The surprise announcement was made during a teleconference with City and Wall Street analysts in which Hayward attempted to shrug off the personal criticism saying words "could not break his bones".
BP has faced mounting anger in the US over the accident on 20 April when the Deepwater Horizon rig blew up and sank with the loss of 11 oil workers' lives.
The Macondo well continues to spew out oil although a containment cap was placed on top of the leak today. Hayward said it would take a further 48 hours to know whether it was successful.
Responsibility for the leaking well and the clean-up strategy will placed in the hands of Bob Dudley, one of the company's most able directors.
Dudley, a US citizen, has been looking for a suitable role in the company since he was thrown out of Moscow in a battle with the Russian shareholders of the TNK-BP joint venture in the middle of 2008.
Hayward said the clean-up business would be run separately by Dudley with his own staff but the finances and budget would come from the main BP group. The BP chief executive said the purpose of the split was to allow Dudley to concentrate on the Gulf problem while he and other directors were not distracted from keeping the main business on track.
But see Breaking: BP "Hives Off" American Operations!, Daily Kos, June 4, 2010, by dhfsfc, excerpt quoted verbatim:
Dudley, a US citizen, has been looking for a suitable role in the company since he was thrown out of Moscow in a battle with the Russian shareholders of the TNK-BP joint venture in the middle of 2008.
In sum, Dudley is an American executive so odious that even the Russians don't want him in the country, and someone who has not had a "suitable role" at BP for two years, ie., has not had a job anyone was willing to trust him with!
Interestingly, Hayward candidly advised The Guardian that the purpose of the split was to allow Dudley to concentrate on the Gulf "problem" and so that he and other Directors could keep from being distracted from BP's "main businesss."
In addition, on a conference call with analysts, Hayward noted that he had been verbally attacked by many American(s), however he noted that: he had a "thick jacket", . . . adding: "They've thrown some words at me, but I'm a Brit. Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me."
Somehow, I smell a giant rat in BP's hiving off it's American operations. I just know that somehow they are doing this to limit their legal liability and keep overall corporate profits high and protected from legal encroachment, NOT as any operational ploy to run the company better.
Bu you're right Tony Hayward, BP executives, Goldman Sachs execs and rich people around the world, sticks and stones are not going to hurt you.... maybe. But just maybe America will see what is going on and say "enough". Because this religion of greed has gone too far.
And just maybe the whole Gulf oil spill was somehow inevitable or even "necessary" to these rich people. Maybe it had to happen so that the energy companies could better their bottom line when the supply/demand imbalance for gasoline was corrected as the government reacted to the spill. Well, that' what's happening, isn't it?
For more conspiracy theories, visit and watch two Russia Today videos, Alex Jones oil spill Conspiracy In The Gulf, and Oil spill is a conspiracy?.... not completely believable but definitely food for thought. I think that just maybe, the Deepwater Horizon spill and ecological catastrophe was necessary. Necessary to better the corporate world's bottom line as the supply/demand imbalance for oil inevitably corrected itself afterward. If not necessary then damned convenient.
One fact remains: In the production of the Deepwater Horizon well, workers removed the drilling cement from the casing and replaced it with seawater, before the well had been brought into production, prematurely. This is not normal procedure but is at best irresponsibly reckless and at worst a fairly obvious way to cause a big overpressured well to blow out. That is just a fact.
The whole thing is pretty sickening, one way or another.
As a committed Christian, I'm getting confused these days. I thought the predominant religion in America was Christianity, but I guess maybe it's now become ultracapitalism.... I get confused by people's attitudes about social services and the "necessity" for us to keep our hands off of business, by people's attitudes towards our fellow man and the extent we are willing to be our brother's keepers, and by what I see going on in the world around me. Must be a communist plot.
See GOP Wants a Country by Corporations for Corporations, AlterNet on Evans Liberal Politics, May 27, 2010, by Leo Gerard.
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