Walmart – The Frustrated CFO

From CNN's Breaking News:

"EXCLUSIVE: President Barack Obama told CNN's Jake Tapper on Thursday that some of the country's largest corporations have signed on to a White House plan to boost the hiring of the long-term unemployed.

'What we have done is to gather together 300 companies, just to start with, including some of the top 50 companies in the country, companies like Walmart, and Apple, Ford and others, to say: Let's establish best practices,' Obama said in the exclusive interview…

Obama's move is in line with his pledge to use executive action on his agenda items that he hasn't been able to get through Congress."

The Frustrated CFO Comment:

Alrighty then! So, this is how we are going to deal with overpopulation and economic stagnation: Instead of cutting down government spendings, ceasing the preposterous fueling of the financial sector, ending the subsidies to failing industries, letting the stock market to finally adjust to its real value, providing incentives to domestic manufacturers for repatriating their productions from overseas, and reducing business taxes in order to reignite small-business growth, the President proposes to create a new form of Welfare, i.e. to force big-time employers to absorb long-term unemployed people - in exchange for some tax credits, no doubt.

Hmm… Not that I'm concerned for the overgrown business superpowers with their blown out of proportion stock values and unjustifiable multi-million-dollar executive salaries, but if they don't experience a labor-force deficit, why would they accept extra employees? That goes against every single principle of a market economy, even in its degenerative form we have right now! And where they are going to employ them? Walmart is planning on opening more super-stores? They are everywhere already. So is Apple. And Ford? Do you mean Ford Motor Company, the one that posts $5-$6 billion losses every year; the one in Detroit – the city declared bankrupt by US judge Stephen Rhodes two month ago? You must be kidding!

And how these companies are going to pay these people? I can't imagine the execs will let their ballooned compensations to be slashed by 80%. So, what then? Everybody, except for a handful of the privileged, will take the same percentage cut to accommodate the unnecessary additions? Let's make most people equally poor, so that everyone can be "employed" and bring home something? Wait a minute! Didn't somebody already tried this experiment? Oh, yes, communists in the socialist camp did! Worked like a charm: destroyed their economies and created hordes of lazy, unmotivated, and unskilled workers! Welcome to your future, people, courtesy of your elected leader!

Since Walmart and their subsidiaries (including Sam's Club) are public companies, the Waltons (Jim, Alice and S. Robson) are on the Forbes' billionaires list – numbers 20, 21, and 22 at $21 billion each. That's their holdings in Walmart stock. Well, let's say there is a few more billions in their private holdings. Does not matter. When it comes to bargaining for the Walmart's interests they come as one, so to evaluate their real power we should combine their wealth. That puts them into competition for the first place on the world-wide list – definitely above Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. No question – a very power family.

Many people have problems with Walmart for many reasons – they destroy local business, they discriminate, particularly against women (Funny how that class action suit was dismissed by the Supreme Court on account of women being too different to represent a class. Well, they all have vaginas, don't they?) But you cannot deny the fact that they are the country's largest employer with a steady growth. Remember my previous New-York-Magazine-Intelligencer-prompted post The New Economic Reality of Unemployment? 2.1 million people – where would they go, if it was not for Walmart? Of course, most of them make very little money, but it's still more than the government's help.

Anyway, it's a free country and I love capitalism (not the bastardy, distorted, perverted paper version we have now, but the real demand & supply model). Then again, if they push out of business your local bakery, there is no way you will ever be able to get the same quality bread in Walmart. So, that's kind of sad. But as long as they compete fairly…

Well, that's a bit of a problem. Look, now they are planning on coming to the place that cultivated boutique retailing for decades now, my hometown – New York City. And there is nothing fair about the way they try to get in. As a matter of fact, they do it in the most perverse way – by buying their way through resistance with charity donations. According to Eric Benson's Intelligencer report from the last New York Magazine shown here (you can also read it here Big-Box Rolling), since they started campaigning for the location in Brooklyn, they have spent $13 million on charitable giving in New York. Which small farm-to-table store can compete with that?

And I am sure there are plenty of people who think it's a good thing – "they are helping…" They are helping themselves to increase those $260 billion of annual revenues – that's what they are doing. They did not give a penny to those charities before and, I am sure, if someone told them "No" today, the donations would stop immediately. How sick is that? You cannot openly bribe the officials, so you do this? That's not charity, that perverse marketing, and they shouldn't be allowed to use it as a deduction on their tax return.

Well, what can we do? They are super-rich. As I said in my last post, they can do WHATEVER THEY WANT.

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