Corporate Rip-off Artists...

...make me sick, the whole bunch of them.

We, the general public, continue to get stripped of our hard-earned cash and savings, just so that these corporate fat-cats can continue to get their obscene bonuses at the end of their financial year. It was reported on Sky News the other day that the Barclays CEO was reputed to get a GBP9 million bonus.

Point in question...take Barclays Bank UK, who have just posted a pre-tax profit of GBP5.5 BILLION!!! It doesn't matter how you look at it, pre- or post-tax, it is ridiculous! In layman's terms that equates to over GBP458 million profit PER MONTH, or over GBP15 million PER DAY, or over GBP636,000 PER HOUR. Incidentally, this is about ten times what that overpaid, over-idolised wanker David Beckham makes per hour and, quite frankly, neither of them deserve it.

The fact of the matter is...the man in the street is getting ripped off for the benefit of a few shareholders of a particular company, in this case, Barclays Bank, and those are the only people that are benefiting from it. The rich get richer, the poor get ripped off more and more.

And Barclays is not the only corporation doing this, they just happen to be the one exposed to public scrutiny at the moment. I happen to work for a nameless corporation who do exactly the same thing and yet, year after year throughout the financial year, we get told we are performing great, things are looking up, getting better, the share price goes higher and higher. But woe and betide, at the end of the year we are told how we need to drive profits higher, that we haven't performed well at all, and we all need to suck it up and take a 0% increase while our executives get fat bonuses just because they are "in the driving seat" and deserve it. Do me a favour...fuck off!

Dear Mr Corporate-Fat-Fuckin'-Cat, guess what? My expenses DO go up every year in line with the unrealistic increases levied by other corporations, banks and government organisations alike with the result that I can no longer even afford a Kulula.com flight to Durban to visit my parents. Further, I get rated as an "under-performer" because I struggle to meet my fuel bill at the end of the month if I go into the office more than twice a week so I choose to personally suck up the R700 a month that "Hell-kom" rip me off for my ADSL line (because there is no 3G connectivity in my area so I can't use my corporate 3G card), which is still cheaper than the fuel would have cost me. And why? Because the corporation panders to its fat-fuckin'-cat shareholders demands for higher dividends. Fuck your shareholders, I'm an employee who you should be looking after. There will always be shareholders, but there will not always be someone with my skills or experience generating your profits. (this will be the subject of another rant very soon)

I digress, back to topic...

Did BP executives quiver in their Gucci shoes when they were penalised billions by the USA for the Gulf Oil Spill fiasco? No, they didn't. Why? Because their profits STILL EXCEEDED the fine!! The shareholders probably breathed a sigh of relief when that one was announced to the poor. So this year they get a reduced dividend on their shares...so what? They still have an operating corporation and the poor will get ripped off sufficiently in the coming year to make up for that "lost" dividend and probably more on top of that too.

Has Chevron made any revelationary utterances since the news came out that they were found guilty of polluting the Amazon River over years of drilling operations? Hardly a fuckin' word. Yet their fuels will still reach the forecourts of petrol stations around the world and the poor will continue to get ripped off at the demands of their shareholders. No doubt Chevron's profits last year (reputed to be GBP12 BILLION) will pay for the fine imposed on them, so we won't be hearing from them anytime soon, I bet. I see they have "disputed" the fine imposed upon them, but in all eventuality, the fine will probably be reduced to GBP5 BILLION and the corporation will claim a moral victory to the shareholders. They are claiming that it was Texaco that caused the damage, before they were bought out (maybe why, seeing as the lawsuit was filed 17 years ago?) by Chevron, so the fine in "un-enforceable".

Typically, what do corporations do in answer to the reports of high bonuses and profits? Nothing, nada, fokol, fuck all...except to shut right up. Say nothing, then the problem will go away. Just as most corporations do when they are taken to task publicly for things that should not, by law, be allowed to happen.

I believe corporations should be called to account to the general public (fuck the shareholders) for the obscene profits they generate and explain how and why they ripped the public off. Then they should be forced, by law, to rebate most of those profits back to the general public through tax rebates or some such mechanism. So long as a corporation makes even 1c profit, it is a successful company, yet governments (and the public) allow corporations to continue fleecing the public to the most ridiculous amounts.

Take another SA corporation...Vodacom. I know Wreckless has a bug up his ass about this lot, and so he should. Three years ago, they reported a profit of ZAR4.3 BILLION!!! I don't know what their recent profits were, but I can only imagine they must be higher than this. How can they justify the rates they are charging people for their calls and/or text messages? So much for cell phones being the way to take communications to the masses. In the end, it turned out to be just another way to rip the poor off.

The sad part of it all is that governments are encouraging these rip-offs, as can be read in this Sky News article.

And what happens in the world of high finance to "assist" the poor to try and make ends meet? The banks push up their rates, as appears to be the call to the Bank of England in this article. This, in turn, will cause the other banks (Barclays included) to push up their rates and guess who gets it in the neck again because all the other corporations push up their rates to cover the cost of lending money from the banks? Yup, you guessed it, the poor-ripped-off-man-in-the-street....again!

Anyone with half a brain can see that the world economy is driven by one thing and one thing only. Ok, two things, the second of which is sex, but that's another story. It's not demand for money, overindulgence by spenders, profits from investments (and shareholders demands), loans to the poor, food prices, or just about any of the other reasons that are given by corporations and governments the world over.

No...the world economy is driven by THE FUEL PRICE! Let your half a brain wander for a bit of a think. EVERYTHING we have in this fucked up world is driven by the cost of getting from Point A to Point Z, sometimes via B, C and D as well if you are driving a government/taxpayer-sponsored vehicle. Grocery prices go up because delivery trucks drink diesel and goods need to be delivered from depots to store shelves. Bank rates go up because of daily operational costs to move cash around, replenish ATM's, and to refuel fat-cat-executives luxury vehicles. Communications costs go up because of the vehicles they have on the road to fix and service line demands. Even the crude oil we need to make more petrol has to be shipped so it becomes more expensive to transport that crude. Pick something in your life and you will see how the fuel price affects it with a bit of lateral thinking. Even our NSRI fuel costs go up because of price hikes, which in turn causes our corporate sponsors to have to increase their charges to clients because their sponsorships of this vital service are costing them more.

This is up for debate, actually no, it's not...just have a think about it. Man is his own worst enemy. He fucks up everything he comes in contact with, eventually. And that includes his own species.