This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
On GE, Just Say "No"
Kansas City Southern (KSU) is a nice little railroad company. The stock is up 40% the past six months.
The company is well run and is profitable. Some highlights from the bosses on the 2011 results:
“KCS’s solid fourth quarter put the final touches on a successful 2011,” stated David L. Starling, president and chief executive officer.
For the full year 2011, revenue was a record $2.1 billion, up 16% over 2010. This is the first time that KCS generated annual revenue above $2 billion. Carloads for 2011 were 2 million, the first time annual volumes reached the 2 million threshold.
Full-year operating income was $612 million, a 26% increase over the prior year, and the Company’s 2011 operating ratio was 70.9% compared with 73.2% in 2010. Diluted earnings per share for full year 2011 were $3.00 compared to $1.67 for 2010.
Moody's likes KSU, they just upgraded it a notch to Ba1.
RATINGS RATIONALEWith a rapid restoration in freight volume and yield, Kansas City Southern's credit profile has improved materially.
If this company wanted to raise some cash they could do it in a week. Given their current market cap of $7.5 billion, it could do a secondary offering of stock and raise $100mm in the bat of an eye. If it wanted debt financing, that too would be available from yield hungry investors. Given the strength of the balance sheet, I think they could add another $200mm in debt without much of a problem at all.
But KSU is not going to the capital markets for the money they need to expand. Why should they? After all, Uncle Sam is willing to lend them cheap money: (Link)
Kansas City Southern Railway Company (KCSR) has taken out a $54.6 million Federal Railroad Administration-administered Railroad Rehabilitation and Improvement Financing (RRIF) Program loan to purchase 30 new General Electric diesel-electric locomotives.
I’m so sick of seeing this day after day. Washington is shelling out taxpayer money to support this successful company so they can buy locomotives from GE.
GE pays next to no taxes in the US, they haven’t for years. But when it comes to government money, they are on the top of the list for handouts.There is only one reason that GE keeps sucking on the country’s teat, the CEO is best buds with Obama. Not only are they pals, but GE’s top honcho, Jeff Immelt, is advising the President on what to do. There are many segment of our economy and society that need a helping hand from the government. I would put the interests of GE (and KSU) at the very bottom of the list. They are doing fine, they don’t need these handouts.
This is not an industrial policy. It’s crony capitalism of the very worst kind.
.
»
- advertisements -
I always wonder with Rand's followers whether they really don't understand what she was saying, or whether they simply don't care because they consider themselves part of the elite class and believe they will come out ahead under her rubric.
It's astonishing how many people think big government = big morality when nothing could be further from reality.
Ayn Rand's defense of our founding documents on moral grounds is precisely what frightens LetThemEatRand. The "get thee to Somalia!"'s are entertaining tho.
Ayn Rand's sociopathic worldview that has been adopted by some of the world's top leadership is what scares me. And to call her vision a moral one is to employ Orwell. She defined pure self interest as her sole morality. I can point at an apple and call it an orange, but it's still an apple. Ayn Rand did not have a moral bone in her body notwithstanding her desire to change the definition of the word. Ayn Rand's philosophy is a celebration of narcissism. Narcissists the world over love it.
Yeah. I get that you're not a fan. Individual rights are a toughy for collectivists.
Narcissism is not an individual right. Ayn Rand destroyed her credibility when she helped herself to someone else's husband. She is of the type we must protect ourselves from, not aspire to be like. Again, narcissism is not an individual right. What's mine is mine and what's yours is mine. Not a good slogan for a nation full of individuals to adopt.
Ah yes, platitudes and catch-phrases. Bravo. Nice retort.
As if, in essence, thats not what we have today?
You may be living comfortably in todays "soft communism", but most aren't, the rest haven't realized the freedoms they dont have.
Hey, you know what, atleast I have a fighting chance against the "private tribute gun", that I can fire back at, it's a clearly defined target. As for hte "Governement Tax Gun", thats defended and weilded by tools such as yourself.
The idea that we live in a world of "soft communism" is simply ridiculous. We have a hybrid socialist/capitalist system. Mostly capitalist. 1% of private society controls 40% of the wealth of the nation. People like Rush Limbaugh who spend their days rallying against our system have amassed personal fortunes measured in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Must work pretty well for them. The basic concept of communism is that private citizens are all equal and that wealth should be evenly distributed among all of society. I have not seen a single person at ZH advocate for such a system, and it is easy to see why such a system could never work in practice. But those facts don't stop you ideological types from labeling everyone that disagrees with you as commies. Is your way of thinking so indefensible that the only way you can make your point is to create a fictional opponent?
"Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion--when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing--when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors--when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you--when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice--you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that is does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot."
"Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked, 'Account overdrawn.'
"When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, 'Who is destroying the world?' You are."
You guys are worse than Scientologists. Really.
No problems really on the road to Mogadishu - I arm and outfit my truck loads sent between the city market.
Its an operating cost we pass to the consumer, and it falls equally on all who play.
Bandit checkpoints are thus never the problem - and my only real concern now is the size of the monthly stipend Prime Minister Mohamed's new administration pays TFG soldiers.
For now its not enough to encourge them to disarm my convoys. But soon enough - their taxpaid checkpoints will be worse than those I can now easily overcome.
"People from those areas who were interviewed in Mogadishu say Shabab fighters are blocking rivers to steal water from impoverished villagers and divert it to commercial farmers who pay them taxes. The Shabab are intercepting displaced people who are trying to reach Mogadishu and forcing them to stay in a Shabab-run camp about 25 miles outside the city. The camp now holds several thousand people and receives only a trickle of food.
“I was taken off a bus and put here,” said a woman at the camp who asked not to be identified.
Several drought victims who have succeeded in making it to Mogadishu said that the Shabab were threatening to kill anyone who left their areas, either for refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia, or for government zones in Somalia, and that the only way out was to sneak away at night and avoid the main roads." http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/02/world/africa/02somalia.html
So your point is the US government is a more sophisticated version of the Shabab gang?
But we already knew that.
Give a man a gun, and he can rob a bank, give him a bank and he can rob the world.
Its is true that when a foreign military drone eliminates a Shabab checkpoint, my transporters job is made easier.
Furthermore, drought brings added hardships to us all.
Its the artificial burden of any tax-supported 'predator' that the human condition could easily do without when naturally struggling.
Bruce,
This pork is being prepared "Chicago style".
nuff said :-)
Yes, but it does bear repeating, even ad nauseam, until we are so sick of it, we do something about it.
Thanks Bruce, I hadn't found enough other bullshit to make me nauseous this morning.
BK : It is election year!
everyone needs to say NO to paying taxes. seriously. this is beyond reprehensible!
i wrote earlier: if you calculate the IRS inflow of personal income taxes vs. corporate tax forgiveness (e.g. GE, AIG, etc.), then the discrepency = the gov only collects personal income taxes to punish its citizenry. more and more i am of persuation that government is not simply pernicious, but solely exists to punish, destroy and control.
taxation today is misrepresentation, without representation.
Time to buy those votes, step up to the federal slop bucket and take your fill.....