The concept of Shock Doctrine was coined by Canadian Author Naomi Klein by way of describing Milton Friedman’s belief that “a good crisis should never go to waste”. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Friedman’s doctrine was used to impose Capital friendly “Structural Reforms” upon Latin American populaces in the throes of major crises. The most notable example being Chile, which to this day has a GDP per capita one third of the U.S. and income inequality worse than Zimbabwe (Gini Coefficient). Likewise, the political cover for U.S.-domestic corporate Shock Doctrine was provided by 9/11, during the Bush Administration. In conjunction with China’s accession to the WTO, U.S. export bans on technology that had been in place through the 1990s were lifted, setting off rampant outsourcing of factories and technology at the rate of 17 per day on average between 2000 and 2012. High paying jobs were swapped out for low paying jobs using 1% “Patriot Loans” and home equity lines of credit to paper over the difference. Once the 2008 Financial crisis struck however, the eight years of Bush era temporary and part-time jobs vanished in a matter of months. Mostly in the areas of construction, bartending, and retail. Sadly, 2008 which was a direct result of 9/11 Shock Doctrine led to yet another round of corporate Shock Doctrine, this time at 0%. The nascent Occupy Wall Street movement, which gained brief prominence in 2011 during the U.S. debt downgrade was a vain attempt to stir the aging masses from the fetal position. However, as we’ve learned over two decades in Japan, a populace above a certain average age has a strong preference for return on capital over return on labour. So the bubble blowing and economic carnage were given the green light to go into Quantitative Easing overdrive. QE being the Central Bank purchases of long-term bonds to drive down their yields and encourage stock market speculation. QE overwhelmingly represents Central Bank bias towards capital over labour...
ZH: August 22nd, 2016
Bill Gates Now Worth Over $90 Billion
Microsoft has laid off over 20,000 employees since 2009 and according to this article, 18,000 more layoffs are coming...
Microsoft: Total Employees 118,000: ~15 percent layoffs = 18,000 (The company is letting go about 200 to 250 people every week, but none of these are ever announced.)
This is Microsoft stock with TOTAL Operating Profit Available to Common shareholders (red line). In other words, mass layoffs are funding stock buybacks which bolster per share profit, while the company is essentially at the same level of business it was at in 2007. You could hire a fucking chimp to run this company into the ground and yet Wall Street is loving the liquidation sale:
All compliments of the Federal Reserve:
Microsoft with Fed balance sheet:
