Institutional lunacy

I just dont get it, a massive loan is taken out to buy a company at some extortionate eye-watering price and then the costs of paying the interest of that massive loan is dumped on the company who struggle to pay it, or more often fail and go bankrupt. In the meantime all the fatcats along the way are creaming off their bonuses for putting together all the different components of all these massive deals. This is supposed to enrich us and make us a wealthier nation? This is not a one-off, this has now become a routine practice. A companies stock value is something to play with, to generate a higher stock valuation or manipulate a fall in value before a buyin. Welcome to the russian roulette of the stock market. Except the bullet ends up in all our heads. We are the losers, irrespective of whether the gamblers win or lose.

A companies stock should be there to help it grow and sustain itself for the long term, any stock value rise reflecting its successful strategy should be a bye reward. The stock market player and their institutional backers have stood this on its head. Today's stock market value is the only thing that counts and the consequences for the company, short term or long term, its survival, prosperity or it imminent bankruptcy are all of no consequence, other that how those situations can be best exploited to gain a stock market increase. It is sheer utter lunacy.

These massive loans that a company has to default on (its business just cannot not feed that amount of interest payment), get traded on, as if they are real assets, an illusory promise to pay is used to raise yet more money. Crazy, absurd but it is going on and no one is saying stop, this is plain stupid. The politicians are silent, we are on the road to recovery! The institutions are silent, so long as their investors see growth who gives a toss about a companies or a nation's future. The company, its employees and we are all helpless as our voice counts for nothing. The Stock Market is run, controlled, mediated by and serviced by the Institutions, who are answerable to zilch.

Yet interest payments are not wealth, increasing debts, good or bad, are not wealth. Wealth comes from producing goods or services that others want to buy. That takes the long game, time, care, commitment and a long term investment in renewing, updating and streamlining the provision in this increasingly competitive global market. The demands for this long game view could not be higher or more important. Instead we saddle companies with unnecessary debt loans that kill them off, the good with the bad. Their goes our future. We have to make it stop. Institutions have to be reigned in and their dominance of the Stock Market taken away. No Institution should be allow a shareholders voice. All decisions of a buy-out must have a majority of (non-institution) shareholders voting in agreement. Put people back in control. Invest in and support all those worthy companies who are working for our and our children's futures.