Dow 3600 & the current TOTAL syndro

[dawnstar@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Subject: Re: Dow 3600 & the current TOTAL syndrome (enhanced version) 

The following article critical of the global stock investor euphoria in
major capital markets is worth a quick look as markets go up and down,
and as the US investor institutions account for half of TOTALFINA (now
with Elf added, it remains to be seen the exact percentage as Elf brings
in other investor blocks including the French government). One in two
americans now own stock, and so when boycotts talk to them about
investments, they should listen, because their dollars are at play here. 

It is also interesting that throughout all the mails I have sent
suggesting that in the US americans take serious a boycott action
against institutional investors holding blocks of TOTAL stock, virtually
nothing has been done about it. 

Is the Free Burma movement in the US concerned about this major
institutional investor stake in TOTAL? It is good that the movement has
been so active on the selective purchasing issue (sorry to bring this up
as Simon Billenness says he's on vacation, and I strongly support Simon
and his efforts) but isnt it also about time that the movement take on
the issue of INSTITUTIONAL INVESTOR RELATIONS WITH TOTAL?

Or is this appeal for civil and consumer action just falling into an
ocean of disinterested neglect?

Because, THAT - and not the FRench media, as suggested in the recent
postings about some French MPs in the oil commission review, is what is
going to influence TOTAL's management. 

AND ONCE IT HAPPENS THAT IN THE UNITED STATES CIVIL PROTESTS START
HITTING THOSE BACKERS OF TOTAL LIKE MERRILL LYNCH AND OTHERS WHO
RECOMMEND IT TO INVESTORS, THEN YOU MAY SEE SOME ACTION. AND NOT BEFORE.
YOU CAN BET ON IT. TAKE THE TIP. 

WHY NOT ASK GEORGE SOROS DIRECTLY ABOUT THIS AT THE QUANTUM FUND? ITS A
FAIR QUESTION AND THERE SHOULD BE A CLEAR ANSWER. PERHAPS HE HAS TOTAL
STOCK TOO. ASK HIM? ASK HIM IF HE RECOMMENDS IT TO HIS INVESTORS?

I have asked Simon about this question, directed to his Trillion group,
and to Simon personally, but there has never been a response. And that
really is too bad, especially in view of what how the shareholder fold
of TOTAL has grown, at the cost of democracy in Burma. 

dawn star


from Multiple recipients of list CORP-FOCUS <corp-focus@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Robert Weissman <rob@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Dow 3600
> By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
> 
> A couple of wise guys write a book titled Dow 36,000 and the market takes
> a dive.
> 
> Former Washington Post columnist James Glassman and his sidekick, Kevin
> Hassett, want us to believe that the stock market is grossly undervalued.
> 
> In Dow 36,000, the book that has received inflated reviews by a
> stock-market crazed public, Glassman and Hassett make the argument stocks
> will double, even quadruple, within a short period of time and that the
> Dow Jones Industrial Average should -- and will soon -- reach 36,000.
> 
> The book was published on September 20. On that day, the Dow closed at
> 10,823.90. As of this writing, the Dow stands at 10,019.71 -- a 7 percent
> drop, in less than a month. Way to go boys! You jinxed it!
> 
> All kidding aside, we take the view that the market is wildly overvalued.
> Glassman and Hassett think it should be 36,000. We think it should be more
> like 3600.
> 
> Here's why.
> 
> Corporate financial reports purport to measure profits and loss. Hundreds
> of billions of dollars in social costs -- sometimes called corporate crime
> and violence -- are for the most part externalized -- they don't make it
> onto the balance sheet.
> 
> Thus pollution, corruption, fraud, worker death and disease, price-fixing,
> shoddy consumer products and false advertising -- are costs that should be
> borne by the corporate perpetrators, but instead are paid for by
> consumers, workers and individual citizens.
> 
> This happens because there is not an effective counterweight -- law
> making, law enforcement or otherwise -- to the growing corporate power
> that overwhelmingly dominates the political economy.
> 
> In his book, The Tyranny of the Bottom Line: Why Corporations Make Good
> People Do Bad Things (Barrett Kohler, 1996) American University Accounting
> Professor Ralph Estes estimated these costs to be $2.6 trillion a year --
> that's five times all corporate profits for the year 1992 -- the year of
> the study.
> 
> Let's assume that Estes is off in his estimate by a factor of five --
> which he might be. The costs that corporations impose on the rest of us
> would still wipe out all corporate profits!
> 
> The science of estimating social costs is admittedly squishy. There is a
> big unknown factor. But at least Estes tries to put a number on it. The
> companies don't even report the costs, and there is a dead political
> economy that allows corporations to impose these costs on living,
> breathing human beings at will, virtually without popular resistance and
> without a demand for a public accounting.
> 
> Glassman is currently housed at the corporatist think tank, the American
> Enterprise Institute. At a luncheon session there recently, and in a phone
> interview, we asked him if one of the assumptions he makes in Dow 36,000
> is that the country would remain controlled by the corporate interests.
> Glassman said that while he didn't have a crystal ball, he assumed that
> the "benign political environment" (read: ongoing control of our democracy
> by big corporations) would not be dramatically changed.
> 
> "There's only a remote possibility that we are going to retreat on
> market-oriented policies," Glassman said.
> 
> For example, he wouldn't want to see a crackdown on corporate violence.
> Or, rather, he doesn't see corporate violence.
> 
> A couple of years ago, Glassman wrote that the rich "don't commit the
> violent crimes that require billions to be spent on law enforcement."
> 
> We asked him whether he would include in his definition of violence cancer
> caused by petrochemical companies that pollute a city's air and water.
> "No, I would not consider that violence," he says.
> 
> Jonathan Rowe is a Washington journalist working on a book tentatively
> titled When Down Is Up: How Our Economic Barometers Mask Disaster,
> Divorce, Disease and Misfortune as Prosperity and Economic Advance
> (Doubleday, 2000).
> 
> Rowe says that Glassman is "a case study in the congenital inability of
> most reporters to look past the numbers and see what these Wall Street
> trends actually signify in people's lives in concrete terms."
> 
> "Glassman totally assumes that when the Dow goes up, life gets better,"
> Rowe told us recently. In fact, Rowe explains, it often gets worse.
> 
> Many of the growth industries in the economy -- prisons, casinos, nursing
> homes -- reflect a troubled society.
> 
> "The things that you and I would call misfortunes, as seen through the
> lens of the Dow Jones Index, are economic gain," Rowe says.
> 
> Glassman says that the percentage of Americans owning stock has increased
> from 10 percent in 1965, to 20 percent in 1995, to close to 50 percent
> today. He thinks this is a good thing, because the more people own stocks,
> the more they will align their political views with the corporations they
> own, the more politicians will be beholden to corporations, thus creating
> an even more favorable political atmosphere for corporate stock ownership.
> Glassman calls this a virtuous circle.
> 
> Rowe says Glassman is talking about an economy that works like a
> retrovirus. "It turns us into agents of the disease," he says.
> 
> Dow 3600.
> 
> Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime
> Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based
> Multinational Monitor. They are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The
> Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common
> Courage Press, 1999; http://www.corporatepredators.org)
> 
> (c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
> 
> ---------------------------------------------------
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