Speech

[darthvader5300]

People today wants the short term temporary quick buck that is inherently unstable and short lived as opposed to the long term permanently normal paced buck that is inherently stable and indefinitely long lived.

[darthvader5300]

Copper is used in making almost unbreakable beryllium-copper bronze to protect fiber optics networks, it is used in high temperature heat dissipation systems in all industries and their products, marine grade copper-manganese-nickel alloys are used in preventing marine bio-fouling of their heat exchangers using cold sea water to cool down power plants and in water desalination facilities, brushless d.c high voltage generators can now transmit power without copper cable length limitations, etc

[darthvader5300]

If the money is used to invest in the brick and mortar-based industries of the real economy which is also known as the physical economy then you are backing up your money with a physically tangible asset(s) produced from earth, processed from the earth, manufactured from the earth, and serviced by real human scientific, engineering, technological, technical, machinists manpower resource inputs and are then serviced by supporting service personnel like safety inspectors, medical personnel, etc.

[darthvader5300]

If any Wall Street people will say that their money is backed by something physically tangible physical assets it is not because they used the money to build it, they only used the money to buy it. That's the difference between owning something because you bought it & owning something because you built it! That is what this speech is all about. Money just represents wealth & is not wealth by itself unless you use it to physically produce a product from the physical economy that will back it up.

[isaysee]

>??=Can't tell if u r with me here or what. U say "real PHYSICAL-ECONOMY"-but Economy is a ACTIVITY type NONphysical thing. It involves SOCIAL participation-unless u call a FoodChain an ECONOMY. If u do- u will streach the word into meaninglessness. My remark/position is that PreditoryBehavior must be kept in check in favor of SymbioticBehavior- as in, "a JUNGLE isn't really a SOCIETY & LawOfTheJungle isn't REALLY Law at all. LAW is what *WE* agree on.Should WE allow the SLEEPING 2 b devoured?

[darthvader5300]

@isaysee economic social participation between workers and employees in all fields of industries must have something physically tangible to work with and physically tangible to work on, hence the word physical economy comes into existence ever since man started to produce something to barter with in primitive times up to the 21st century when man is using computerized robot-driven automation/CAD/CAM factories producing products to back up the local economy's local currency and to trade with it!

[isaysee]

@darthvader5300 - Your throwing words around like dust in the air and obscureing the real issues. Of course there must be tangibles involved in economic activity just as there can be no movement without substance - but thats not the dynamics involved here. It's about upper level deductive reasoning and elemental instant gradification type primative predatory behavior.

[Vesman1]

I love this "you create nothing" bullshit... does it mean that all people who work in services should be fired and transfered to factories or mines?

As long as "it" makes money it doesn't really mean whether it's creating something or not...

[365to173repubsPWNED]

@Vesman1 To a degree he is correct. The derivation of valuable services from the top (companies) to the bottom (stock speculators) has caused major problems for the economy. Some is good yes, too much is bad

[ThatIsNotDeadWhich]

@Vesman1 Productive services do create something. Amusement, comfort, peace of mind. Even some financial businesses create useful things. Fire insurance comes to mind.

Corporate raiders, however, create nothing. Their business model is essentially parasitic. A counterfeiter "makes money," in the most literal sense possible, yet we do not regard his work as productive. And so it is with most of these hedge fundies.

[isaysee]

@Vesman1 - hired killers make money and we've outlawed that - - PS= he said POST industrial America - he didn't say Post service industry America. - - - - PSS- service biz creates satisfied customers.

[darthvader5300]

@isaysee Services-based industries and businesses can only exists if there is a real physical-economy which is tangible because it is based on real centers of production the lies only in the extractive, processing, and manufacturing industries and businesses and networks of infrastructures supporting them & in turn these physical-economic industries and businesses supports these infrastructures. Then creating a market for services-based industries & businesses dependent on these real industries!

[isaysee]

@darthvader5300 - Hi Darth- if I may call you by your 1st name. My comment below is intended to be directed to you as responce to your reply to me- but I somehow neglected to hit the "Reply" button.

[ThatIsNotDeadWhich]

"We will then have become a nation that makes nothing but hamburgers, creates nothing but lawyers, and sells nothing but tax shelters."

It is hard to find a more fitting epitaph for Western industrial civilisation.

[subcom6]

No movie could have seen the future better!!

[thequietkid10]

such a powerful duel, and it's so true today. Peck is right when he bemoans the greed and the lack of industry which has filtered into this country. Devito's character is right in his assessment of capitalism.

[darthvader5300]

besides, of what good is money and paper assets when they are not backed by anything tangible. money is useless and of no value unless it is backed by wealth production, money is useless when there is no wealth to exchange in the first place, wealth must be produced first before it can be exchanged for something, and manufacturing is the only way wealth is created, people have such short memories, forgetting what real wealth is and money is just a convenient medium of exchange, nothing more

[darthvader5300]

the difference between larry and the older generations before him is that larry only produces paper that can lose value anytime but the older generations before him purchase companies not to liquidate them but to make them even more productive, innovative, inventive, creative in the form of new manufactured products! Not paper assets in the form of fiat money back by nothing, not in the form of stocks back by nothing! Production is wealth creation, money is just exchange of wealth only.

[chad3232132]

Powerful stuff. I get goosebumps every time I listen to Peck's speech (same with DeVito's to an extent). Say what you will about the philosophy Peck portrays in this film, he does represent something sadly missing in today's society - loyalty to one's company and it's workers. Let us never forget that it was the type of company President Peck protrays who built America into a historic success and not "Larry the Liquidator."

[mrtvi46]

Obviously Jorgenson is a great industrialist. However he has to realize that some products get obselete and that's where Larry fills a function. Jorgenson would trick himself and the employees if they were to keep doing what they do. Larry and Jorgenson are two functions of the same gold coin. Produce! But once your time is up, acknowledge that fact and let's move on.

[Kazakor]

Peck's speech is nothing more than a half-time speech given to a losing football team. If "we care about people," we do the hard things necessary to keep them employed. If we don't, we fill them with pabulum and fairy tails about a past that never existed and tell them how sorry we are when the plant closes and they lose their jobs. It is time this country grew up and learned that the only thing that matters in business is being profitable. Everything else is a lie.

[thenutsisgood]

@Kazakor well said.couldnt agree more

[ThatIsNotDeadWhich]

@Kazakor The thing is that the company in that film *is* profitable. Just not profitable *enough* for Wall Street's double-digit required return on investment (which is straight out of magic-pony-land anyway - no healthy industrial going concern has ever had a consistent 15 % pr. year payout on its equity).

Garfield's business model is simply a privately imposed tax on industrial companies. And, unlike proper taxes, the people who pay it get no vote on how big it is.

[Kazakor]

@ThatIsNotDeadWhich I run a division of one of the largest companies on the planet, so, believe me, a day doesn't begin or end without me worrying about stock price, profit and ROI. But, let me ask you this, who REALLY drives that double-digit return demand? It isn't the boardroom. It isn't the corporate officers. It isn't even the Street. You know who it is? Stock holders. 401k investors. Mutual fund owners. In other words, its all of us who expect to retire someday.

[Kazakor]

@Kazakor One last thing: wealth is finite. Money invested in a dying company is NOT money invested in a living one. Dying companies shed jobs. They destroy the financial health of their employees; they ruin their employees futures. Living ones build futures. Saving a dying company with money better invested in a living one is selfish, cruel and cowardly. Bad managers fail to take responsibility for finishing off the dying, ultimately hurting many others to avoid doing the hard thing themselves.

[Zamolxx]

Still liquidation of a physical business and using the money on the international casinos aka financial derivatives is not a good thing either. Rather retool, restructure, redesign... The service economy paradigm is one of the largest hoaxes ever produced.

[ThatIsNotDeadWhich]

@Kazakor Indeed private pension funds are a particular invention of the Devil and should be shot in the back of a head, dumped in a shallow grave and replaced with universal public pensions. That would greatly increase the efficiency of our industrial and financial system.

But Wall Street is to blame too. In the '60, the decade that marks the pinnacle of American industrial civilisation, 15-20 % of all US profits accrued to financial firms. Today 40-50 % do. And that's not counting CEO "pay."

[ThatIsNotDeadWhich]

And it does matter where the profits are distributed - because if most of the profits accrue to large industrial firms, they can give the money markets the middle finger and invest according to their long-term engineering goals. Once stock is issued, the company should ideally not have to worry about it ever again. If you subject industrial production to the "oversight" of the animal spirits of the securities markets (and which seem to be mostly those of bipolar crack monkeys), it stops working.

[Kazakor]

@That: Again, great imagery! Global economics ensure that we always sweat stock price. If your stock is priced low, your company is a takeover target. If it is high, you can acquire other firms and compete more effectively with China and India. If your company fails to draw capital investment from outside and fails to accrue profit from revenue, then it eventually becomes irrelevent in the marketplace. Price is Power; Power is Freedom; Freedom is Security. Without price, one's workers go hungry

[ThatIsNotDeadWhich]

@Kazakor Set high margin requirements and suppress the size of investment trusts, and you kill the corporate raiders' business model. Devalue the dollar and you kill the offshoring business model. Reduce leverage and reduce shareholder power, and the industrial sector can fund itself out of retained revenue without needing the money markets at all.

It all comes down to politics: If you want an industrial state, let engineers make the rules. If you want a banana republic, let bankers make them.

[Kazakor]

@ThatIsNotDeadWhich Very colorful imagery! If by "public pension funds" you are refering to the vehicles that are destroying municipal budgets across the country, I couldn't disagree with you more on their viability or virtue. If you believe that company-funded pensions are the answer, again, we disagree strongly. One has only to look at the destruction of the auto industry in the US to see how a successful industry can be destroyed by such things and how costly they are for consumers.

[ThatIsNotDeadWhich]

@Kazakor If private pension funds are viable, then nationalising them is viable as well - sovereign pension schemes have lower overhead and lower funding cost than private schemes.

Oh, and the auto industry was killed by a combination of Reagan/Volker de-industrialisation policy, the fact that American engineers just aren't that good compared to German and Japanese engineers, and stupidity and incompetence on part of the management. The pensions weren't ill-advised at all.

[blmgod]

@chad3232132

The types of companies who built America were successful companies.

[ThatIsNotDeadWhich]

@blmgod But that is the point. New England Wire and Cable *is* a successful company. It is debt free and its cash flow is viable on a going concern basis. The only problem it has is that it isn't as profitable as the banksters on Wall Street demand it to be.

Now, if the banksters actually had a proper use for the industrial plant that they are dismantling, then that, as Peck says, would be something worth talking about. But they haven't. They'll sell a perfectly good going concern as scrap.

[NemeanLion]

@chad3232132 If you got goosebumps in DeVito's speech as well, then I don't see how you can be so fond of what Peck's character says. The CEO was lost in his dreams of a comeback and drained the publics money to fuel those dreams. That's why Garfield's speech was so powerful. His speech not only shut him down, he buried him, all the while facing a hostile audience. Despite the CEO's nobility and character, he lived in a world of delusion where things are not as rosy as they seem.

[darthvader5300]

@chad3232132 money and shares only have values if they are backed by something tangible. what most people has forgotten that their money is just a representation of wealth and is not wealth itself and is used only for the transfer of real physical tangible economic wealth for an economy is composed of two economic systems w/c is the representing financial economy and the represented physical economy w/c is the real economy and wealth of a nation. Unfortunately this reality is not taught anymore.

[isaysee]

@chad3232132 >OK-Whatabout Citizenship-Loyalty to the NATION-agreeing to PRIORITIZE trade WITHIN OurNation- Employing our own AHEAD of others rather then FREEING those among "US" who OutProsper the rest of "US" to move what they have aquired HERE elsewhere in order to FURTHER OUTPROSPER. What bout ageein'ta prioritize the buying of "US" goods over imports SO I CAN"T SUBCONTRACT OFFSHORE & BEAT YOUR BRAINS OUT CAUSE I GOT MORE CAPITOL THEN YOU ! [ pleeze don't report me- I'm not a PinkoCommie ]

[isaysee]

@chad3232132 - I think I agree with you because I think you mean the type of Companys we're sadly lacking today are Companys that deserve loyalty .

[bigdatut]

This is a great speech, and it is often used in economics classes, along with the reply from Danny DeVito - Laurence Garfield. Also a great speech.

[Jurassic0Al]

Yes, both of them make excellent points. Very good for economics classes, both of them.

[reconorder]

mr smith goes to washington and OPM aka AIG wants all other peoples money

[BAhern63]

the prayer for the dead!!

[PrimeDirector]

You forgot to say amen.