I’m coming toDEFCON! OnFRIDAY(Aug 9), I’m emceeing theEFF POKER TOURNAMENT(noon at the Horseshoe Poker Room), and appearing on theBRICKED AND ABANDONEDpanel (5PM, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01). OnSATURDAY(Aug 10), I’m giving a keynote called “DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE!How hackers can seize the means of computation and build a new, good internet that is hardened against our asshole bosses’ insatiable horniness for enshittification” (noon, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01).
Here’s an open secret: the confusing jargon of finance is not the product of some inherent complexity that requires a whole new vocabulary. Rather, finance-talk is all obfuscation, because if we called finance tactics by their plain-language names, it would be obvious that the sector exists to defraud the public and loot the real economy.
Take “leveraged buyout,” a polite name for
stealing a whole goddamned company:
Identify a company that owns valuable assets that are required for its continued operation, such as the real-estate occupied by its outlets, or even its lines of credit with suppliers;
Approach lenders (usually banks) and ask for money to buy the company, offering the company itself (which you don’t own!) as collateral on the loan;
Offer some of those loaned funds to shareholders of the company and convince a key block of those shareholders (for example, executives with large stock grants, or speculators who’ve acquired large positions in the company, or people who’ve inherited shares from early investors but are disengaged from the operation of the firm) to demand that the company be sold to the looters;
Call a vote on selling the company at the promised price, counting on the fact that many investors will not participate in that vote (for example, the big index funds like Vanguard almost
never vote on motions like this), which means that a minority of shareholders can force the sale;
Once you own the company, start to strip-mine its assets: sell its real-estate, start stiffing suppliers, fire masses of workers, all in the name of “repaying the debts” that you took on to buy the company.
This process has its own euphemistic jargon, for example, “rightsizing” for layoffs, or “introducing efficiencies” for stiffing suppliers or selling key assets and leasing them back. The looters – usually organized as private equity funds or hedge funds – will extract all the liquid capital – and give it to themselves as a “special dividend.” Increasingly, there’s also a “divi recap,” which is a euphemism for borrowing even more money backed by the company’s assets and then handing it to the private equity fund:
If you’re a
Sopranos fan, this will all sound familiar, because when the (comparatively honest) mafia does this to a business, it’s called a “bust-out”:
ALT
