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Juicy little conspiracy theory

The alignment of the recession and the advent of the iPhone

Armando Riesco, Josh Cooke, and Matthew Rauch.
Armando Riesco, Josh Cooke, and Matthew Rauch.

Junk: The Golden Age of Debt is currently running at the La Jolla Playhouse. The play is set in the financial situation of the mid 1980s. This is the period of Wall Street, Boiler Room, and The Wolf of Wall Street.

Junk: The Golden Age of Debt

The intention of the author, Ayad Akhtar, was to create an origin myth for the current mindset of our financial organizations. Much of what Akhtar explains via his main character, Robert Merkin, makes sense to us today.

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Merkin’s approach was to raise money to buy a company based on the cash flow of the company. This raising of money was in the form of selling bonds against the company’s revenue and then using that money to purchase the stock of the company until a controlling share was achieved. It’s a little like taking out a mortgage to buy an investment property secured by the rents of the property.

Once owned the company would be reduced to its most necessary elements in order to repay the bonds. In the process, jobs that were not producing profit were cut.

No duh. Right? Why employ people who aren’t making the company money?

This is where we begin to see the relevance to the current situation in our economy. Jobs.

After 2007, companies slashed jobs and began getting more work out of fewer employees, which fueled what is called a “jobless recovery.” This was not the first jobless recovery. The term has been in use since 1935.

How were fewer workers able to do more work? The iPhone came out in 2007 and ushered in the age of never not being at work. Or at least it helped. I’m sure there’s a juicy little conspiracy theory out there somewhere about the alignment of the recession and the advent of the iPhone.

Money has become the fifth element — air, water, earth, fire, and money. Junk posits that the process of money becoming as necessary as air began in the mid 1980s.

There is no doubt that jobs were sacrificed for money. The income of tens of thousands of people was transformed into the wealth of a few people who figured unnecessary can be removed and the income can be pocketed by those doing the removing.

We now appear to be living in an age where jobs are being cut in order to meet growth expectations. Qualcomm cut 1314 jobs in September of 2015 but still netted $1.5 Billion for that quarter and the next.

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Armando Riesco, Josh Cooke, and Matthew Rauch.
Armando Riesco, Josh Cooke, and Matthew Rauch.

Junk: The Golden Age of Debt is currently running at the La Jolla Playhouse. The play is set in the financial situation of the mid 1980s. This is the period of Wall Street, Boiler Room, and The Wolf of Wall Street.

Junk: The Golden Age of Debt

The intention of the author, Ayad Akhtar, was to create an origin myth for the current mindset of our financial organizations. Much of what Akhtar explains via his main character, Robert Merkin, makes sense to us today.

Sponsored
Sponsored

Merkin’s approach was to raise money to buy a company based on the cash flow of the company. This raising of money was in the form of selling bonds against the company’s revenue and then using that money to purchase the stock of the company until a controlling share was achieved. It’s a little like taking out a mortgage to buy an investment property secured by the rents of the property.

Once owned the company would be reduced to its most necessary elements in order to repay the bonds. In the process, jobs that were not producing profit were cut.

No duh. Right? Why employ people who aren’t making the company money?

This is where we begin to see the relevance to the current situation in our economy. Jobs.

After 2007, companies slashed jobs and began getting more work out of fewer employees, which fueled what is called a “jobless recovery.” This was not the first jobless recovery. The term has been in use since 1935.

How were fewer workers able to do more work? The iPhone came out in 2007 and ushered in the age of never not being at work. Or at least it helped. I’m sure there’s a juicy little conspiracy theory out there somewhere about the alignment of the recession and the advent of the iPhone.

Money has become the fifth element — air, water, earth, fire, and money. Junk posits that the process of money becoming as necessary as air began in the mid 1980s.

There is no doubt that jobs were sacrificed for money. The income of tens of thousands of people was transformed into the wealth of a few people who figured unnecessary can be removed and the income can be pocketed by those doing the removing.

We now appear to be living in an age where jobs are being cut in order to meet growth expectations. Qualcomm cut 1314 jobs in September of 2015 but still netted $1.5 Billion for that quarter and the next.

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Flowering pear trees in Kensington not that nice

Empty dirt plots in front of Ken Cinema
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