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Satire: Bovine Capitalism Around The World
Note: The following is doing the rounds on email.
TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM:
You have two cows.
You sell one and buy a bull. Your herd multiplies, and the
economy grows. You sell them and retire on the
income.
ENRON VENTURE CAPITALISM:
You sell three of
them to your publicly listed company, using letters of
credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then
execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer
so that you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for
five cows. The milk rights of the six cows are transferred
via an intermediary to a Cayman Island company secretly
owned by the majority shareholder who sells the rights to
all seven cows back to your listed company. The annual
report: Sell one cow to buy a new president of the United
States, leaving you with nine cows. No balance sheet
provided with the release. The public buys your bull.
AN
AMERICAN CORPORATION
You have two cows. You sell one,
and force the other to produce the milk of four cows. You
are surprised when the cow drops dead.
A FRENCH
CORPORATION
You go on strike because you want three
cows.
A NEW ZEALAND CORPORATION
You have two cows. You
pay tax based on your projected earnings for both this year
and next year, with a penalty for either late payment or
underestimated milk production. You borrow money, using the
cows as security, so you can pay overdue tax, together with
ACC levies, GST, FBT and OSH compliance costs. You pay back
half the loan by selling both cows to a monopoly dairy
corporation, who lease the cows back to you, in an effort to
minimise FBT and administration costs. The dairy corporation
pays you 10% of your agreed return due to a loss in foreign
currency earnings, increased directors salaries and a failed
investment in an Argentinean property venture. The cows
strike, demanding pay parity with sheep.
A JAPANESE
CORPORATION
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the
size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk.
You then create clever cow cartoon images called Cowkimon
and market them World-Wide.
A GERMAN CORPORATION
You
have two cows. You reengineer them so they live for 100
years, eat once a month, and milk themselves.
A BRITISH
CORPORATION
You have two cows. Both are mad.
AN
ITALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows, but you don't
know where they are. You break for lunch.
A RUSSIAN CORPORATION You have two cows. You count them and learn you have five cows. You count them again and learn you have 42 cows. You count them again and learn you have 12 cows. You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka.
A
SWISS CORPORATION
You have 5000 cows, none of which
belong to you. You charge others for storing them.
A HINDU
CORPORATION
You have two cows. You worship them.
A
CHINESE CORPORATION
You have two cows. You have 300
people milking them. You claim full employment, high bovine
productivity, and arrest the newsman who reported the
numbers.
AN ISRAELI CORPORATION
So, there are these
two Jewish cows, right? They open a milk factory, an ice
cream store, and then sell the movie rights. They send their
calves to Harvard to become doctors. So, who needs
people?
AN AUSTRALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
That one on the left is kinda cute...
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