Work is Wealth

Wow, Stewart's dismantling of Cramer and CNBC was staggering. His essential argument:

• The stock market was pushed on the general public who were told it was a safe place to put their money AND they would receive huge returns.
• CEOs, Bankers, Stock-Brokers, Hedge Fund Managers, Financial Experts, and Financial News Journalists were all aware that investing was far more complex and far riskier than what they were telling the general public.
• These institutions, focusing on short term profits at the expense of long term growth and stability, were complicit in manipulating the public and creating the circumstances that led to the recent collapse.
• The absence of real journalistic practices in the Financial News industry results in reporting that is essentially an infomercial for a legal con (i.e., the selling of snake oil as vitamins). Financial reporting is worse than useless, it's actually dangerous.

The best defense that Cramer could offer was that he could provide insight into the double-dealings. Sort of like when the FBI hires a con man to help them identify the modus operandi of other con men. Brilliant.

There was also a more subtle point that Stewart made which was that wealth resides in labor, and not in the plutocrats, the bankers, or the CEOs. On the one hand you cold say it was a slippery slope in the direction of rallying the workers to unite and overthrow the slavery imposed by the bourgeoisie. But really the point was that wealth is created when workers produces goods and services that create value. Not from playing games with money and skimming a percentage off the top. Life is not a casino where the house always wins. Life is work. Life is building and creating things that are worthwhile and that stand the test of time.

What Stewart pointed out is that our notions of success as voiced by the financial wizards - who monopolized the very notion of success by conflating all human endeavours with commerce - have in their glibness and cynicism destroyed much and created very little.

The Dumbest Idea in the World

The irony is so great, far-reaching and spectacular, that it will undoubtedly go unnoticed and unfelt. And yet, here's Jack Welch, hero of the managerial class on the stupidity of share-holder value:

In an interview for the Financial Times' series on the future of capitalism, the former General Electric (NYSE: GE - News) chief said the emphasis by executives and investors on shareholder value since he spelt it out in a speech in 1981 was misplaced.

Mr Welch, whose stellar record in his two decades at GE helped make shareholder value popular, said that it was wrong for managers and investors to set consistent earnings growth and steady share price increases as their overarching goal.

"On the face of it, shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world," he said. "Shareholder value is a result, not a strategy...your main constituencies are your employees, your customers and your products."

And yet that practice has been the defining strategy of every company I have ever worked for, and as businesses have struggled quarter after quarter to reach increasingly impossible targets while cutting costs and reducing staff and laying off workers we've created an entire economy where no one produces anything of value, provides any useful service, or looks to any future beyond the near term. In the effort to increase the fortunes of the few, they've driven the business world into a ditch and feel no more responsibility than an "oops, my bad."

The Jack Welch's of the world have been wrong about everything for as long as I can remember: the never ending stock market bonanza; the unstoppable real estate boom; the banks; the free market. The list goes on and on.

The dumbest thing in the world right now is to think you can get anywhere by working for a living. Assuming you have a job at all, which thanks to Welchian business practices is increasingly unlikely.