On Feb 1, 2009, at 4:11 PM, James Heartfield quoted:
> "What I see is enormous pressure on corps from shareholders to
> shovel big loads of cash into their pockets rather than invest it in
> the business. That's
> a battle within the capitalist class that doesn't fit into any
> standard Marxist models...
Yes, but the pockets of *which* "shareholders?" Not people holding common stock in their IRAs, 401Ks, or long-term portfolios. Not workers invested in pension funds. They are the big losers in that 'battle," and they comprise the overwhelming majority (and majority interest) of "shareholders." The winners were people able to realize the fictitious "wealth" created by stock-market-price increases-- Corporate and Fund executives holding stock options and/or receiving salaries and bonuses reflecting stock-market-price increases based on buybacks and "profits" (profits produced by what Gurdjieff called "Schachermacher accounting and triple-entry-bookkeeping"). In other words, by ripping off the shareholders. And whether or not Marx "modeled," he fully anticipated this sort of behavior when (in vol. 1) he characterized "executive compensation" as "a new swindle."
And, of course, when (if ever) no swindle is involved, widespread stock buybacks always signify a zero or negative Marginal Efficiency of Investment. In other words, the sure sign of an approaching slump.
Shane Mage
> This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it
> always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire,
> kindling in measures and going out in measures."
>
> Herakleitos of Ephesos