Corporations

So it looks like i don’t have food poisoning after all. It’s a belly-flu of some kind… made clear by the chills and sweats and aches and pains that kicked in yesterday, mid-morning. So now i’m sitting here eating a delicate breakfast (7up and toast… no butter) and reading the financial news. Looks like the economy is sicker than me.

The first headline that caught my attention said, “Sickly Citigroup slashing 20 percent of it’s workforce.”

My first reaction was pure unadulterated JOY. I have been a loooong-time hater of Citigroup who is, to me, the epitome of greedy immoral corporations… the perfect symbol of everything that is wrong with the world todat. It all started for me when one of my best friends got snared into a Citigroup-owned pyramid scam named Primerica*. The cult-like mentality of Primerica employees made them frightening to talk to. Just like amway or cutco or aquatech, you were recruited and shown pictures of yachts and mansions that former employees supposedly bought with their earnings… and the first thing you’re asked to do is fork over a list of all your friends and family members’ phone numbers. The average primerica employee only makes an around $600 a year and give up. But in the time it took them to get wise, they’ve already scammed their families and friends into overpriced loans… overpriced insurance. My mission was simply to save my friend from being suckered. By the time i was done educating him, i pretty much lost him as a friend until he “sobered up” a few years later.

So anyway I was stoked beyond stoked to read that Citi (as a whole) was fucking up… but then Emily reminded me that the people who are really at fault here are going to walk away from this no worse off than they were before. The 53,000 employees they’re about to lay off will shoulder that weight, unfortunately. Just like how Yahoo is about to drop the hammer on 1200 of their employees in less than a month… The problem lies in their greedy impatient shareholders who want to see short-term growth NOW… and in near-impossible amounts… It’s always up to the employees to make these fucked up expectations happen and those bastards never feel the recourse of their greed. The little guy loses.

If you have never seen the movie “Corporation” i highly recommend that you do. It’s one of the best documentaries i’ve ever seen. It makes me a bit furious at where we have arrived here as a global economy… but i think it’s important that everybody has some perspective. We NEED to do something about these coporate entities. Shareholders should NOT be able to put impossible growth demands on businesses and then slash the employees to make their numbers work. There is NOTHING RIGHT ABOUT WHAT CORPORATIONS HAVE BECOME. PUBLIC ENTITIES NEED TO BE STOPPED. AND BOARDS OF SHAREHOLDERS NEED TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEIR ACTIONS.

More info on…
Primerica
Citgroup Scandals

Tags: corporations

Tuesday, November 18th, 2008 Uncategorized

1 Comment to Corporations

I HATE Citigroup also. Fuck those guys.

Even dot coms are doing this kind of lay-offs (preemptive – ie Zivity, Current, etc)… but I think that is due to NOT having the girth to take chances. In this case, Citigroup just sucks, as per usual.