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Townhall
Finance...
Democrats
Seek to Establish “Reasonable Profits” Boards for Energy Companies
by Jeff
Carter
January 20, 2012
This is
truly amazing to me and gives you a clear plate glass window view of
the
Democratic thought process. They want to establish a “Reasonable
Profits Board”
for energy companies!
The
Democratic energy policy is stupid. There isn’t another way to say it.
One can
ridicule it, satire it, make fun of it, but their line of thinking is
stupid.
No wonder we can’t educate anyone efficiently in the public school
system. What
the heck are they smoking? Maybe I want some.
Let’s say
we implement the Reasonable Profits Board for Energy Companies. Are we
going to
establish a Reasonable Profit Board for Banks? How about for lemonade
stands?
When I went
to business school as an undergrad and as a graduate student, I never
learned
how to add the “reasonable profit” line into income statements. Could
someone
from the left wing please instruct me as to how to calculate that?
If I don’t
calculate it properly, is there some GAAP guidelines that the FASB has
put out
that I can follow? To estimate Cost of Goods Sold or to match revenue
to
expenses, I have a set of standards that I can point to when I make a
judgement. What’s “reasonable”? Does “reasonable” change in better or
worse
economic times? If I employ only union members does that reflect on my
“reasonable”? Can I also have a “reasonable loss”? Surely if there is
profit,
there has to be its antithesis. Maybe in tomorrow’s New York Times they
will
post the guidelines on the editorial page.
Then again,
I could be so dense I missed this innovation. Maybe this is a brand new
development in investment banking that is so cutting edge it cannot
possibly
have burrowed its way into the latest literature on measuring profit in
a
company. EBITA now becomes EBRPITA.
I like the
“PITA” reference since we know the Greeks are such financial savants.
When
doing a merger or acquisition we could see if the company should be
bought at
10x the EBRPITA. Maybe there is only a reasonable acquisition price and
if a
stock goes too high, we ought to give sellers of the stock the
difference.
Warren Buffett would be all for that! If I invest in a seed company, I
should
have them redo their financial statements because after all, as an
investor I
should only concerned with “reasonable profits”. That extra stuff just
gets
posted to cash or turned over to Uncle Sam I suppose.
It never
ceases to amaze me that other so called very important and credentialed
people
think they should be able to tell a business or individual how much is
the
correct amount to make.
Virtually
the entire Democratic litany has to do with ordering average people
around.
“Don’t use that light bulb because”, “if you make $250k you are….” ,
“recycle”,
“you have too much”, “they have too little” and on an on ad infinitum.
Of
course, if you are telling them what to do they say you are impinging
their
freedom and they call the ACLU.
As my
friends in the trading pit used to say, “How ’bout a little STFU?”.
The
economic platform of the Democratic Party is Sesame Street Economics.
It is
rooted in a nothingness, so devoid of critical thought that you can’t
even take
them seriously anymore.
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