2015

2015

We surge ahead to the modern era.  Some will say, none of this applies to me; it’s all archaic and outmoded: gee, I thought we were smarter than that.  Yes, J&L, as well as CF&I, and countless others are all toast: how can they possibly affect me.

Let’s take a more understandable small business example, a dentist.

We will conveniently ignore the fact that many modern dentists are following the path of the small farmer.  Small farms are rare today, most farming is done by large corporations.  The farmer is no longer an independent capitalist, no longer a sole-proprietor, no longer on duty for 24 x 7; instead, he reports to work like any other employee: as with other business, the money is spun off through leveraging, and usury.  It seems as if a new dental corporation emerges every day: Gentle, Depot, Aspen, and more.  The private dentist will not be able to long compete with this juggernaut.  In spite of all the facts to the contrary, let’s suppose that dentistry is still a viable business entity: you graduate, hang out your shingle, and start making money.

Suppose that you graduated with your DDS last May.  After eight grueling years of study, during which you made no income, you are now saddled with $20,000 in undergraduate debt, and $300,000 of dental school debt.[i]  Your dental school placement offices conduct demography studies for the broad area, and a promising potential site has been identified in a small town without local dental services.  You assemble and submit your business plans to banks, building contractors, equipment manufacturers, and a host of others.  You acquire all your local and state licenses.  Much of this preparatory work was laid out while you were still in school.  So, by June you are ready to open your doors to your first paying customer.  You are also $400,000 deeper in debt;[ii] that’s $720,00 gross, three quarters of a million dollars.  This says nothing of the fact that you also want to buy a house, marry, and raise a family… another $250,000 conservatively.  That’s right, at square one, you’re already in hock for a cool million bucks in round numbers.

You are organized as a sole-proprietor.  You have no employees: you do all your own prophylaxis, x-ray, and other work.  An answering service handles all phone calls, appointments, and prints out a daily summary to your email.  Dentures, crowns, and other devices are contracted to a big city lab with overnight delivery.

The question is, who is the real owner?  On paper, you, as sole-proprietor, are the only owner.  In fact, your vestiture is 0%, you are leveraged to the roof top and will be for many years.  Who is the real capitalist?  In theory, you are.  In reality: the bank owns the building; the manufacturer owns the specialized equipment, which is, in turn, leveraged to another bank; your house and car are mortgaged.  The bank(s) is/are the true capitalist/owner/proprie-tor(s).  The specialized equipment manufacturer is an intermediate capitalist/owner/proprietor.  The only thing you have capital ownership over is a mountain of debt.

Business goes well for several years.  The bank takes its cut off the top: most of the earnings go to service interest or usury.  Your vestiture grows only very slowly.  The specialized equipment manufacturer takes its cut next.  You are saddled with maintenance, repair, and other operational costs, which easily run 10% of the gross capital value every year.[iii]  Dentistry is a rapidly growing technological field, so you must also bear the cost of new equipment or leverage these as well.  After a decade, you might find yourself vested at 10%... at last, you have become a capital owner.  On the other hand, you are still the enslaved employee of the bank and specialized equipment manufacturer.  The government and insurance companies tell you what services you may perform, what you may charge for them, and pretty much every other aspect of doing business: but, you are a capitalist, an owner, a sole-proprietor of 10% of pretty much nothing… all the hard decisions are made for you by others… you get to lock and unlock the doors, and pay the bills.  The teeter won’t begin to totter until you pass the half way point.  Firm ground will not be attained until you reach 100% and eliminate all leverage.

The demographics of your business is sustained by a small manufacturing plant that employs 200 people.  These, in turn, spend enough money in town to sustain 200 other people’s jobs (including yours); together they support the town budget over and above what the local farm and ranch business supplies.  These are your customers.  This is the whole basis of your success as a dentist.  After a decade, the manufacturing plant can no longer compete, lays off all its employees, and locks its doors.  All your customers, 400 of them, are now out of work; moving away as fast as they can find new jobs: and you are out of business as well.

Who takes all the risk?  Does the bank have any risk?  Not really.  They might have made slightly more money had the mortgages played out their full time limit: but the interest fees collected up-front covered their capital investment a long time ago; they’ve been making gravy ever since; so the bank has no true risk at this level.  Does the specialized equipment manufacturer have any risk?  Not really.  They took a minor hit; but, they scooped up all the equipment; resold it to other dentists; and with sales and other fees, pocketed a tidy profit at your expense.  The building went back to the bank, with little risk, and was soon leased to another venture.  Who took all the risk?  You did.  All those leveraged debts are in your name, and baring bankruptcy, you are obliged to pay them off: so, you must start over.  At best, you recoup a few thousand bucks of equity; really nothing compared to the mountains of debt you still own.

Who is the real capitalist?  The bank is.  Any idea of your own capitalism is delusional.  The risk to the bank, which is sheltered by up-front interest or usury fees, is nil.  The chance that the bank won’t pick up all the chips, and spin them off in new loans is zero.  The bank will make the same amount of money in the long haul; just from another customer; they experienced a minor bump in the road.

Who are the real owners?  The real estate firm and the specialized equipment manufacturer are.  Any concept of personal ownership is a form of psychological denial.  The risks to the real estate firm and the specialized equipment manufacturer are nonexistent.  All the hard assets are recovered in days, and put back into play: it was a bump in the road.  You get to keep your shirt, your diploma, and your debts.

Capitalism or ownership as we think of it, together with its concomitant risks, simply does not exist in a leveraged society.  There is no more risk to the bank, the true capitalist-owner, than there is to the local casino; one person’s luck is soon offset by the losses of another; there is no risk to the casino: for, 10% is taken off the top of every bet.  The only true risk falls on the back of the player, the employee, the hard-working poor person... in this case, you, a young dentist, fresh out of dental school.

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[i] http://doctorly.org/cost-vs-reward-of-a-dental-school-education/

[ii] https://benevis.com/content/cost-of-starting-a-dental-practice/

[iii] 10% of $1,000,000 is 100,000 a year, one-tenth of a million dollars.

1955

1955

In 1955 Jones and Laughlin[i] was a vibrant player in the steel industry.  A short time later J&L borrowed money[ii] from the Carnegie Mellon Bank[iii].  Had we truly though ahead on all the ramifications of exponential equations we might have predicted what would come next.  It world remain another decade for Al Bartlett[iv] to explain these to us in clear understandable ways.

This transfer of massive amounts of money did far more than shift ownership from a Steel Man to a Banker.  What Bartlett might have warned us, had he been two or three decades earlier, was the inevitable headship of major corporations by accountants[v], followed by lawyers[vi].  Any sensible person knows that growth is mathematically unsustainable, initially undetectable, and chronologically overwhelming, the clock is ticking.  This is why accountants would take over to manage the money growth; as well as why lawyers would be necessary to sort out the legal battles when it became clear that growth was unsustainable and collapsing under its own weight.

In spite of these preposterous impossibilities, nearly all business and government models are based on growth.  Federal budgets might range between 2 to 5% growth in conservative years, and even higher in progressive years.  This means that we can expect the economy to crash within fourteen to thirty-five years or sooner: it was planned that way.  In actual fact, the federal bailouts seem to be following election cycles, crashing roughly every eight years.

Still, around 1955, most of us understood business models in terms of agricultural[vii] cycles.  Those were heady times: The Great Depression (1929-39) and WWII (1939-45) were past; After the Stock Market Crash of 1929, Wall Street was not widely trusted[viii]; The Chevy short-block was starting to take over the drag strip, and men could feel the flow of power return to their muscles.  Big Steel would surely last forever.

Eventually, leverage[ix], would far outstrip the pittance J&L borrowed post-55.  Leverages of 90% would not be unheard-of.  The shift in ownership changed much more than ownership.

†       Banks now owned the corporations.
†       Steel Men ceased to run the Steel business.
†       The business emphasis shifted from making Steel to making Money.
†       Money shifted the value of hard capital to mythical paper and electronic treasures.
†       Usury soon made money outweigh real capital values by many magnitudes.
†       While money was growing due to usury, real capital was declining due to age related decay.
†       Money made business appear to be growing in a true downturn economy; so, market corrections became less and less obvious, less and less automatic.
†       The ability to offset downturns with money, made the eventual downturns larger and more disastrous; instead of annual corrections, decade corrections were put into play.

Business collapse still wiped out the “old” owner, but he was no longer relevant; the true owner was the “new” owner, the Bank.  The Bank didn’t get wiped out.  Why?

†       The true profits had been milked off through usury.  Having made and pocketed billions, a few million here and there is an affordable statistical loss, a cost of doing business: this is no different than a casino facing a big payout to a bid winner… and that can be managed too.
†       In contrast to the pseudo-capital gains created by usury, the hard capital losses are now insignificant.
†       The paper losses are now a tax-deductible line item; the Bank does not suffer: the tax paying public foots the bill.
†       While hard capital losses are also tax-deductible they are still a real business downturn: the stockholders foot the bill.
†       If paper losses spin out of control, as they eventually must, a federal bailout picks up the tab: again, the tax paying public foots the bill.
†       The true owners, the Banks, are rewarded with executive bonuses and raises.

As long as the federal government is committed to spinning off all down turn losses on the general public, on the backs of the hard-working poor, there is no true business risk to the true owners, the Banks: everybody else faces big risks and losses.

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[i] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jones_and_Laughlin_Steel_Company

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NLRB_v._Jones_%26_Laughlin_Steel_Corp.

[ii] Around 21% of its gross worth, as I recall… the exact numbers don’t matter.

[iii] Today Mellon HQ’s from NYC; but as I recall, around 1955 it was Carnegie Mellon Bank of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Steel, Carnegie Mellon University… you get the connections.

[iv] University of Colorado, Boulder, Dept. of Physics, circa 1965 or later

http://www.albartlett.org/presentations/arithmetic_population_energy_video1.html
https://www.albartlett.org/presentations/arithmetic_population_energy.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Allen_Bartlett

[v] 1975, to pull a number out of thin air.  Business historians could greatly sharpen these numbers for us: but, we’re simply trying to recapture a very general picture from memory.  If we err, you’ll forgive us: for, we’re merely painting, where neither memory, nor oil on canvas permit great precision… only, Monet like, in broad brush strokes….

[vi] 1985, in keeping with the theme of decades.  These are not real dates, just general tendencies… the tendencies are real enough: major business magazines of the era were filled with the discussions.

[vii] Agriculture is now defined as, “turning oil into food”.

We remember that in an agricultural economy, that the amazing growth of summer, must face the winter downturn, and begin again from zero, next spring.  Unlimited and unrestrained growth, year after year, was and still is a physical impossibility.  The lessons of “The Ant and the Grasshopper” were still in play; saving for winter and other future needs were still necessary.  “Waste not, want not.”  The bitter stings of the Stock Market crash (1929), reminded us all that conservation was essential to life.

[viii] In 1929, many corrupt and dangerous practices, such as churning money were still legal.  Even today, churning is still practiced, albeit secretly.  Few people realize that money is made by shorting in a Bear Market.  Insider trading is still legal for members of federal government.  There are many more ways to make money than in a Bull Market.  Churning is still possible through the manipulation of large volumes of commodities.  The digital age has reduced real money to split-second decisions.  The rest of us are happy to check our balances once a month.

[ix] Leverage is the practice of borrowing money to accelerate business.  When money is under limited supply, such as in a gold or silver economy, leverage is also limited, borrowing is a zero-sum game.  But under a paper or digital electronic economy, money is in unlimited supply: leverage has no boundaries… just print or digitize more.