[lbo-talk] Koch Bros sue widow for 16.00

Chuck Grimes c123grimes at att.net
Wed Mar 7 12:17:43 PST 2012


Sounds ridiculous but too good to pass up:

``Koch's money strings at FSU [Florida State Uni.] pales in comparison to the $30 million the Koch foundations have pumped into George Mason University's (GMU) economics programs. Much of the details concerning how much control Charles Koch has at GMU nonprofits remains a tightly guarded secret. Both FSU and GMU are publicly funded institutions.

So what we have at Cato today is essentially the same illusion of fair dealings behind a dark curtain of control based on secret contracts. Cato has over $52 million in assets, according to its 2010 tax filing with the IRS. The Koch brothers, if the court rules in their favor, could spend $16.00 to acquire 16 shares of stock for $1 each from Niskanen's widow, and end up controlling $52 million in assets. That's not so much a hostile takeover as it is the most adept arbitrage maneuver in history.''

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/03/05/koch-brothers-worth-50-billion-sue-widow-over-16-00-of-nonprofits-stock/

The above is the closing paragraph but the rest of the article is worth going through if anybody is interested. The main point is to realize the K boys buy economics dept. faculty appointments at FSU and GMU to keep their version of neoliberalism in place. I guess it's not much different than the Haas family buying UCB a business school, called naturally enough The Haas School.

http://www.haas.berkeley.edu/

Now doesn't that little web ad give you the creeps.

CG



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