Friday, August 23, 2013

Is This a Great Fucking System? Or What?

As we await the inevitable crackle of gunfire when stewed masses awaken from their Kardashian-watching food coma to realize that global elites sold everything that wasn't bolted down, we are reminded daily of the overwhelming depths of depravity of the current crony capitalist "system". Today, Steve Ballmer resigned from Microsoft and the stock is up 7% on the news. Apparently he just made over $750 million due to the spike in the stock arising from his own resignation. You can't make this shit up...

This story via AllThingsD, who reported the amount that Ballmer made from his own resignation. Ballmer was CEO since January 2000. From the day he started as CEO in 2000, Microsoft lost over $350 billion in shareholder wealth (market cap). That's 2% of the entire U.S. stock market. It's 1.4x the value of IBM in lost shareholder value. Of course Ballmer himself amassed a $15 billion dollar fortune. 

His best quote during his tenure selling bloatware, was that the iPhone had no chance of success. It now accounts for half of Apple's profits. 
“There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance.
Paid to Fail
We also learned this week that the CEO of Blackberry will win a $55 million dollar bonus for running his company into the ground. The recent news that the company is shopping itself around, means that their phone business is dead and the company is being sold for its patents and software. So everyone else at the company gets to lose their job. I submit that with all of these payoffs for failure - similar to what we say on Wall Street in 2008 - then we will see a lot more failure in the days to come.

Microshaft (Inflation adjusted and including dividends)
Paid $15+ Billion and a $750 Million "Quitting Bonus" To Lose Over 50% in 13 Years:
Is This A Great Fucking System?  Or What?