Democracy for shareholders ?

Who is protecting the small investors? No one.
In a take-over, merger or private acquisition, what is the power of the small shareholders? None.

According to our Federal Reserve Board, the average compensation of the top 25% CEOs reach $9 million, including incentive plans. Our CEOs make more than 100 times the average salary of their employees. In Europe, 25 times. In Asia, still lower.

As we can see with the premature primaries, America gets the best democracy money can buy. Small shareholders, as the great majority of citizens have no say, even if their votes are counted.

We have seen in the last few years the purchasing power of hedge funds and private funds. Small shareholders are at the mercy of those mega money deciders. It is true that pension funds, mutual funds, investment funds, and other fund managers, have a certain role in protecting small shareholders, but, unfortunately, their power is quite limited.

Quite often, they will even contribute to the loss of thousands of employees, by encouraging (or not obstructing to) the ego and selfishness of Senior Executives who dream to build mega companies. They all used the same non-excusable excuse: "we need to get bigger in order to compete at the international level". Bigger is not better. Sometimes, it is just a way to dissimulate the incompetence and/or poor efficiency of present operation.

Same philosophy with the military forces: we failed in one country, let's invade another one. In the last 12 months, two poor performing companies, Alcoa and Phelps Dodge, have tried, without success, to buy or merge with two more performing competitors in Canada, ALCAN and Falconbridge. One example where the interest of Canadian shareholders prevailed.

For generations, we have encouraged the public to buy shares, to become shareholders. The great propaganda about the American democracy. Now, with 18 presidential candidates, who is there to defend and protect the small shareholders? So far, none.

The tandem Cheney-Bush prefers to lecture other countries about democracy while practicing a dictatorship at home, and sleeping with selected dictators abroad. In both instances, they just ignore (simply do not care) the interest of the general public.

Recently, Alan Greenspan, former chairman of Federal Reserve Board, addressed several concerns about the U.S.'s status as the world's leading financial centre and its competitiveness with U.K. and Asian financial centres. He said the U.S. has had the “misfortune” of being a financial superpower for many years.

“When you're at the top, there's only one direction you can go,” he said. “It's not as though we in the U.S. have lost competitiveness,” he said. But, he pointed out that “it's inevitable that the market value of U.S. exchanges relative to rest of world is going to go down, or rather won't go up as fast.”

HKEx has recently released its strategic plan for 2007 and 2009. The plan is aimed at securing the continuing development of Hong Kong's financial markets by further enhancing HKEx's performance while improving overall market quality. By capitalising on HKEx's core strengths, the plan seeks to advance HKEx's mission to be a leading international marketplace for securities and derivatives products focused on Hong Kong, Mainland China and the rest of Asia.

The plan, designed to make the most of opportunities and address challenges in an increasingly competitive environment, provides a roadmap for HKEx in the next three years. Thanks to the White House, our disastrous foreign policy will as well invite foreign companies and foreign investors to ignore listing in New York or Chicago.

In our article "What are we boycotting now?" (see archive of January 17), we were asking the following questions:

1) Do the members of the 110th Congress know that New York is not anymore the financial market of the World?

2) Do they know that last year, Hong Kong and London Stock Exchanges have respectively issued $41 billion and $39 billion as Initial Public Offerings, versus $29 billion for New York Stock Exchange or $17 billion for NASDAQ? Wait, Shanghai, Moscow and Singapore will also be competing in a few years.

It is obvious that we should not expect anything from a spineless Congress. Most of the members are as responsible as the White House for the decline and fall of the American Empire.

Our soaring deficits (budget and trade) for the last few years shows the failure of President Bush's trade policies to protect American workers. We have borrowed money at an alarming rate, increase our importation, decrease our exportation, allowing foreigners to control a dangerous portion of our total debt.

Sooner or later, we will have to pay our debts to foreign countries. Sooner or later, individuals will have to reimburse their loans for their house, car, credit cards, etc. And our savings are at record low, as a matter of fact, negative.

We have jailed several executives who mismanaged millions of dollars from a few thousand shareholders. How about politicians who have wasted hundreds and hundreds of billion dollars from 300 million people? Should they not go to jail too, especially for having damaged our country for generations to come? It is more than time that someone becomes accountable for something....if not, we should encourage more failures, more fiascoes, more incompetence, less ethics, less moral, less power and less influence with the real world.

The Facilitator

An Irresponsible Cheney

Again, again and again, Cheney does not get it, and repeats the same mistake, over and over. We have mentioned before, several times, that Bush, Rice, Cheney should stay home. Every time, they dare to go abroad, we are losing more friends, creating more enemies. And, more people are laughing at us.

Within four days, our dear Vice President has succeeded to antagonize the Arab World and the Whole World. Being so narrow-minded and short-sighted, Dick Cheney does not realize (and/or does not care) the damage he is doing to the future of our country.

Friday, May 4, it was another useless, childish ultimatum to Iran. Monday, May 7, a plea to save Wolfowitz's job. Of course, the whole world is wrong. Only Cheney-Bush know better.

No one is listening to the White House anymore, but Fox News, and 30% of our population who still naively believe that our leaders are doing a great job.

In contrast to Mr. Cheney's low-key visit in UAE, last week, the President of Iran was greeted with fanfare by the top leaders of the Emirates. According to Mr. Ahmadinejad, the relations with the Emirates are getting stronger, and more friendly than ever. A joint committee has been formed to promote trade, tourism, and energy.

“There's a willingness on both sides to upgrade relations,” he said. “Relations between Iran and the UAE can be a model for all the countries of the region.”

We can expect an alliance between UAE and Iran for their own mutual security and future development, with more independence from United States.

The U.S. presence in the Gulf, Mr. Ahmadinejad said, runs counter to the best interests of the Muslim-majority countries on both sides of the oil-rich sea. Mr. Ahmadinejad said the Americans had overextended their welcome in the region, and were advocating tough actions that reached beyond what their Arab allies wished.

We are witnessing another departure from allies, and soon, thanks to Cheney-Bush-Rice-Bolton-Negroponte, we will become really isolated. We have ignored, and antagonized Latin America, most of Europe, never understood Asia and Africa, and accumulated a series of faux pas and fiascoes in Middle East. Our two closest neighbours, Canada and Mexico, are not supportive anymore.

In regards to the World Bank, it has been recognized by the special committee that Wolfowitz has shown questionable judgment and a preoccupation with self-interest over institutional best interest, without mentioning the lies.

Dick Cheney has no qualms in saying to Fox News (of course, who else is listening to him?): "Mr. Wolfowitz is one of the most able public servants I’ve ever known” and that “he’s a very good president of the World Bank, and I hope he will be able to continue.”

Such a statement reveals the poor judgment of Cheney, (not the first time), but, worse, his disregard for ethics and moral. That's the type of exportation the present administration has been doing in the last five years.

The major problem: when Cheney dares to go abroad and insult the intelligence of others, the rest of the world believes he represents the American people. Our future generation will pay a heavy price. It will get harder and harder for American entities to be recognized and accepted in the rest of the world. Just try to imagine the number of contracts and functions we will be losing in the near future. It will take a few generations to reverse the trend.

Another legacy of Bush and Cheney: nomination and protection of incompetent friends with no ethics. Gonzales and Wolfowitz, being the latest. Both Bush and Cheney are a disgrace to our nation.

It is revealing to notice that, till three years ago, foreign leaders were coming to Washington. Now, Washington must go abroad. How many trips to Saudi Arabia and Middle East by Cheney and Rice, all to no avail. During the Israel-Lebanon war, White House praised and supported Israel, and antagonized the Arab World. In Israel, it has been demonstrated that the said war was a mistake. Again, Cheney-Bush-Rice on the wrong side, with wrong excuses.

Our next President will have a tough job to restore our credibility, and relations with the real world. So far, the rest of the world will never trust any of the Republican candidates. Among the Democrats, none of them have issued a serious and credible program for improving our Foreign Affairs. It is more than time for at least one Democrat candidate to issue a few pragmatic solutions. If short of ideas, contact us at: usalconsultants@aol.com

The Facilitator