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The Leopards Eating Faces and Unlubed Dildo of Consequences Thread


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Posted (edited)
13 minutes ago, Horn Dog said:

WaPo Opinion

My workers voted for Trump. Now they’re absorbing the impact.”

  Reveal hidden contents

Sachin Shivaram is chief executive of Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry and a member of the Main Street Alliance.

It’s a hard truth that some kinds of manufacturing are never going to come back in the United States, and no amount of protective tariffs will change that. This truth is ignored at great peril for American workers.

American manufacturing workers don’t ask for much: a fair wage, steady work and the dignity of knowing their job matters. At the aluminum foundry in Wisconsin where I am chief executive, those jobs start at $27 an hour with a pension, a child care stipend and the security of long-term employment. Many of our people have built careers here, sending kids to college, buying homes and retiring with pride. They are exactly the kind of workers President Donald Trump says he wants to help. On that, we agree.

A disclosure: I didn’t vote for the man. But I’m not just writing this for myself. I’m writing on behalf of the roughly 1,000 workers who power our company — and who overwhelmingly did vote for him. One reason I know that is because in 2020, we hosted then-candidate Joe Biden at our factory in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, and a substantial number of our workers turned up in red MAGA hats, spoiling many a photo op. They made sure management and ownership knew how they felt.

I believe that the president truly wants to help our workers, who form a crucial part of his base. But recent tariffs targeting aluminum imports work against my employees’ interests. I honestly believe this isn’t intentional. Ironically, the president has probably helped me more than anyone at the company, thanks to the increase in the state and local tax deduction and other provisions included in the One Big Beautiful Bill.

Our business had been growing, and demand was strong in the first quarter of this year. But unfortunately, it has all been downhill since.

Our primary product is aluminum castings. We melt metal, make a mold, pour the metal, machine it, and sell custom metal parts for engines or for equipment built by our customers. All of that is done here in the United States, and we serve storied national champions of industry — think tractors, trucks, rockets.

Of any type of manufacturer, we are among the least exposed to the impacts of the new tariff regime: Our input costs are minimal because most of what we buy is raw aluminum and sand for our molds. America doesn’t make aluminum. It is so energy-intensive to refine naturally occurring bauxite into the familiar metal that it’s sometimes referred to as “solid electricity.” We buy aluminum from places such as Iceland and the Middle East, where energy costs are cheaper.

The Trump administration’s tariffs are meant to encourage domestic aluminum smelting. But they will cause real economic pain. Our input costs are up. The Midwest Premium — a fee that largely determines the cost of buying aluminum in North America — has tripled in the past six months. Our nonaluminum inputs rose 7 percent last month alone. We’ve had little choice but to pass those increases on to our customers, who are no doubt seeing even greater increases from other manufacturers. We saw the first evidence of this in the producer price index numbers released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in early August. Wholesale prices are starting to climb, and consumer prices will soon follow.

I get notifications all day and night about big price changes. One would have to be clairvoyant to make capital investment decisions in such a situation, and opinions wildly differ as to what will come next. Will the tariffs hold? If not, when will they change? During this administration? Not until the next?

What is not debatable is that our order rate is down 35 percent to 40 percent since the start of the year. At other companies, too, demand is crumbling. In such a situation, companies have a fiduciary duty to bring costs down, and the one surefire way to do that is layoffs. At our company, we’ve had little choice but to lay workers off at all of our plants. Shareholders aren’t suffering — not yet — because the impact is being absorbed first by the very people Trump’s policies are meant to help.

I know that our challenges are not unique. We have relatively little exposure. In fact, our industry was singled out for assistance. In a different political environment, corporate America would be raising hell. Almost everyone in the business community thinks the tariffs are a bad idea, but CEOs are all too aware that saying so could put their job and company at risk of retaliation from the administration. Is that fear powerful enough to keep corporate America quiet even as consumers start to see prices increase and inflation begins to creep up for reasons that are entirely avoidable and independent of economic conditions?l

Time will tell. For now, I feel as though I’m watching a tsunami video that begins with a shot of a beachside paradise on a sunny day. I encourage everyone to batten down the hatches, because a big, bad wave is coming.

 

A good piece from a guy that seems to see mostly straight.

One thing I quibble with:

"In such a situation, companies have a fiduciary duty to bring costs down, and the one surefire way to do that is layoffs. At our company, we’ve had little choice but to lay workers off at all of our plants."

No, you don't have a fucking fiduciary duty to lay anyone off, or even lower costs. @Captainant 

Edited by TwiceHorn
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Posted
39 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

"In such a situation, companies have a fiduciary duty to bring costs down, and the one surefire way to do that is layoffs. At our company, we’ve had little choice but to lay workers off at all of our plants."

No, you don't have a fucking fiduciary duty to lay anyone off, or even lower costs. @Captainant 

Lol, you try telling a board of directors that you won't cut costs or lay anyone off when your business model is suddenly too expensive. You can pick a legal nit about it, but functionally it's 100% the duty and responsibility of management to protect investors and their money. That means layoffs and cost cutting.

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Posted
46 minutes ago, Colonel Sanders said:

"I believe that the president truly wants to help our workers..."

What evidence exists that Trump has ever given two shit about the working class?  Give me one thing Mr. Shivaram.

Yeah I stopped reading after that.

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Posted
2 hours ago, Colonel Sanders said:

"I believe that the president truly wants to help our workers..."

What evidence exists that Trump has ever given two shit about the working class?  Give me one thing Mr. Shivaram.

Well TFG did say he wanted to help them. But he could have always just been saying what people wanted to hear.

 

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Posted
28 minutes ago, StassneyHorn said:

lol shut the fuck up. Transgender people are ten x the perverts and sickos.

My “demonization” is blaming their nonstop look at me, do something for me, I’m the main character syndrome they all have when there is much more important things going on.

Are you talking about trans people or cis white men?

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Posted
41 minutes ago, StassneyHorn said:

lol shut the fuck up. Transgender people are ten x the perverts and sickos.

My “demonization” is blaming their nonstop look at me, do something for me, I’m the main character syndrome they all have when there is much more important things going on.

You are one incredibly dumb mother fucker.

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Posted (edited)
17 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

Are you talking about trans people or cis white men?

670

That is the number of results, filtered by your username, for the phrase “cis white men.” I believe you need to find a new schtick or breathe in through the nose and out the mouth. I tuned you out years ago, but it is fun to see just how bad it’s gotten with you

 

 

IMG_1014.png

Edited by StassneyHorn
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Posted
3 hours ago, Wiler77 said:

That's a pretty fascinating graph. 

Add staycation to raising your own chickens and growing your own produce as the ways to make America great again

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Posted
1 hour ago, StassneyHorn said:

lol shut the fuck up. Transgender people are ten x the perverts and sickos.

My “demonization” is blaming their nonstop look at me, do something for me, I’m the main character syndrome they all have when there is much more important things going on.

Sounds eerily similar to the look at me, do something for me bitchass white American male.  If the shoe fits . . . .

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Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, StassneyHorn said:

670

That is the number of results, filtered by your username, for the phrase “cis white men.” I believe you need to find a new schtick or breathe in through the nose and out the mouth. I tuned you out years ago, but it is fun to see just how bad it’s gotten with you

 

 

IMG_1014.png

You doughnut, that search will return results for "cis" "white" OR "men". If you want an exact string search, enter "cis white man" like the search tool said

Screenshot_20250901_185243_SamsungInternet.thumb.jpg.9b3901227065f29823c2782d7b9bf17b.jpg

But go ahead and keep doing your hateful bit

Edited by Captainant
Credit where it's due, correcting myself
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Posted
1 hour ago, StassneyHorn said:

lol shut the fuck up. Transgender people are ten x the perverts and sickos.

My “demonization” is blaming their nonstop look at me, do something for me, I’m the main character syndrome they all have when there is much more important things going on.

What is wrong with you?

Goddamn you need to get right

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Posted
1 hour ago, StassneyHorn said:

670

That is the number of results, filtered by your username, for the phrase “cis white men.” I believe you need to find a new schtick or breathe in through the nose and out the mouth. I tuned you out years ago, but it is fun to see just how bad it’s gotten with you

 

 

IMG_1014.png

Wow.

LOL

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Posted
5 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

No, you don't have a fucking fiduciary duty to lay anyone off, or even lower costs.

4 hours ago, Captainant said:

You can pick a legal nit about it, but functionally it's 100% the duty and responsibility of management to protect investors and their money. That means layoffs and cost cutting.

 Neither of you are fully correct about this. The question is situational, and we don’t have the facts of that company’s situation. 

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Posted
1 minute ago, StassneyHorn said:

I don’t need to get right, some retard said I was responsible for trans suicides and 11 joyboys pos repped it

Your schtick this year is terrible. Find a new slant.

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Posted
4 minutes ago, Captainant said:

You doughnut, that search will return results for "cis" "white" OR "men". If you want an exact string search, enter "cis white man" like the search tool said

 

1 hour ago, aggie08 said:

You are one incredibly dumb mother fucker.

 

Posted
35 minutes ago, Sawbonz said:

Add staycation to raising your own chickens and growing your own produce as the ways to make America great again

I have 4 chickens so this hits close to home. 

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Posted
21 minutes ago, BrickHorn said:

This fucking bullshit is one of the most destructive implicit assumptions in modern history. Economists or some talking head say this shit with confident authority, as if it’s a law of nature, and we all nod and say “Can’t argue with that!” I’m as guilty as anyone in that regard (or at least I once was).

But it’s not at all self-apparent that management’s highest ideal should be maximizing returns to investors. Why is that the case? Why should that obligation not be secondary to other concerns, such as the well-being of employees or the minimization of externalities? Why is the pure maximization of profit to people who chipped in a few bucks at the front end (or worse, speculated by buying shares on the secondary market) the unquestionable ultimate duty of those who collectively manage a massive slice of the world’s productive and destructive capacity?

 

 

I mean, he's not wrong, boards and CEOs hide behind it to do the short-term expedient thing all the time.  But it's a copout.

A CEO that wants to do the right thing can, but needs a willing board, but both of them will be shielded from shareholder suits by the business judgment rule.

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Posted
13 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

 Neither of you are fully correct about this. The question is situational, and we don’t have the facts of that company’s situation. 

It is situational, but the fiduciary duty of corporate officers and the board rarely drives a single "permissible" outcome like layoffs.

Posted
2 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

I mean, he's not wrong

In what sense? That there’s case law supporting the notion? Okay. But that misses the point, which is that the idea that the Friedman Doctrine is fucked up and destructive, is not at all an essential principle of capitalism, and jettisoning it could yield a better world. 

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Posted
2 minutes ago, BrickHorn said:

In what sense? That there’s case law supporting the notion? Okay. But that misses the point, which is that the idea that the Friedman Doctrine is fucked up and destructive, is not at all an essential principle of capitalism, and jettisoning it could yield a better world. 

He's not wrong that it is used to justify all kinds of shit and is a copout that the law does not require.

Totally agree, but the Friedman Doctrine is not fiduciary duty.

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Posted

How does it necessarily satisfy fiduciary responsibility to let people leave and their training and institutional knowledge leave with them, not to mention any compensation paid out?  
 

especially if you think you will need to rehire after things turn around.  Seems like it could be the opposite some occasions. 
 

a place known for not laying off as a matter of course also will probably get a better candidate pool when they do hire. 

Posted
4 minutes ago, BrickHorn said:

Friedman Doctrine is fucked up and destructive, is not at all an essential principle of capitalism, and jettisoning it could yield a better world. 

I 100% agree things should not work like that. However in my professional career so far, and in watching my parents go through their careers, that's how it fuckin goes. At least once a business reaches the "growth" portion of its lifespan, which is the life blood of our economy.

None of anything is built upon actual results of returns, it's all speculative based on possible future growth. TSLA out front shoulda told ya. Elon gets away with EVERYTHING simply because he keeps line going up. Nevermind that every capital intensive project with Tesla has failed so far for the last five years or so

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Posted (edited)
11 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

He's not wrong that it is used to justify all kinds of shit and is a copout that the law does not require.

So how does that contradict what @BrickHorn said?

I agree.  When I helped take a company public there were all kinds of "how do you look in stripes" warnings, but I certainly don't ever recall being informed about any legal requirement to place shareholder value above all else.  

Edited by jimmyjazz
Posted
35 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

It is situational, but the fiduciary duty of corporate officers and the board rarely drives a single "permissible" outcome like layoffs.

That’s true. 

Posted
38 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

So how does that contradict what @BrickHorn said?

I agree.  When I helped take a company public there were all kinds of "how do you look in stripes" warnings, but I certainly don't ever recall being informed about any legal requirement to place shareholder value above all else.  

I don't think it does, we're in agreement.

I didn't tag Captainant to antagonize him, but the quote was a perfect example of an executive using fiduciary duty as an excuse for layoffs.  Friedman Doctrine might require such a thing, fiduciary duty does not.

Posted (edited)
7 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Friedman Doctrine might require such a thing, fiduciary duty does not.

Neither requires it. However, that executive from the article *may* have a fiduciary duty to reduce costs. Or not. It depends on their situation.

Edited by Bozo_Casanova
Posted (edited)
42 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

Never mind the possiblity of the wrong people getting laid off.  (Ahem.)

I’ve had to figure out who got laid off twice in my career. It’s unpleasant work. I would love to say the exercise involves matching the skills the company needs to the go-forward strategy, but it’s usually just determined by where people wind up on a spreadsheet. 

 

Edited by Bozo_Casanova
Posted
1 hour ago, Pato del Muerto said:

How does it necessarily satisfy fiduciary responsibility to let people leave and their training and institutional knowledge leave with them, not to mention any compensation paid out?  
 

especially if you think you will need to rehire after things turn around.  Seems like it could be the opposite some occasions. 
 

a place known for not laying off as a matter of course also will probably get a better candidate pool when they do hire. 

In short, it doesn't.  The fiduciary duty of corporate officers and directors has existed as long as corporations have existed.

The fiduciary duty permits consideration of interests other than the immediate share price/book value/earnings-profit of the corporation.

That little bastard Milton Friedman proposed in 1970 that corporate governance should consider nothing other than profit and return to shareholders.  That's never been the law, but it has been a canon of business ethics for a good long while, to our great detriment.  This is known as the Friedman Doctrine, or shareholder doctrine, as opposed to the broader "stakeholder doctrine," which explicitly considers the interests of others as part of the broader interests of the corporation.

Also, regarding Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry:

And, in 2019, Sachin Shivaram brings his vision for growth to WAF as the first non-family CEO of the family-owned company.

Likely all Trump voters, wildcat's petit bourgeouisie.

 

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Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

Neither requires it. However, that executive from the article *may* have a fiduciary duty to reduce costs. Or not. It depends on their situation.

 

absent something where the cost is paying a bunch of your family members who don't work there exorbitant salaries, which no one would call "reducing cost", no, that's not how fiduciary duties work.

Edited by elfenix
Posted
7 hours ago, elfenix said:

 

absent something where the cost is paying a bunch of your family members who don't work there exorbitant salaries, which no one would call "reducing cost", no, that's not how fiduciary duties work.

Yeah, there's a great deal of confusion between the business "ethic" (ha) of shareholder primacy and fiduciary duty.  

So much so that greedhead corporate lawyers like Marty Lipton and Skadden have to write articles reminding people that Friedman Doctrine isn't the law and that even "public benefit" corporations don't need a special statute (although there is one in Delaware and elsewhere).  https://www.skadden.com/insights/publications/2019/08/putting-to-rest-the-debate https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2024/05/07/stakeholder-governance-and-the-eclipse-of-shareholder-primacy/

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Posted
1 hour ago, TwiceHorn said:

Yeah, there's a great deal of confusion between the business "ethic" (ha) of shareholder primacy and fiduciary duty.  

So much so that greedhead corporate lawyers like Marty Lipton and Skadden have to write articles reminding people that Friedman Doctrine isn't the law and that even "public benefit" corporations don't need a special statute (although there is one in Delaware and elsewhere).  https://www.skadden.com/insights/publications/2019/08/putting-to-rest-the-debate https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2024/05/07/stakeholder-governance-and-the-eclipse-of-shareholder-primacy/

It's what's being taught in MBA courses around the country, and has been for decades. Shareholders and investors are more important than anything else, and if you disagree then fuck you you're fired. 

Posted
1 hour ago, Captainant said:

It's what's being taught in MBA courses around the country, and has been for decades. Shareholders and investors are more important than anything else, and if you disagree then fuck you you're fired. 

Everything is so financially engineered it's impossible to figure out wtf a good business even is anymore 

Posted
1 hour ago, Captainant said:

It's what's being taught in MBA courses around the country, and has been for decades. Shareholders and investors are more important than anything else, and if you disagree then fuck you you're fired. 

Still not fiduciary duty.



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