Revenge of the Creatives I... News Corp. and the Global Economy

The revenge of the Creatives...

I always thought that News Corp. and their brands such as Fox News, just made it up. Despite jingoistic slogans such as "Fair and Balanced", they seem to pull stuff out of thin air, without regard to reality.

It was with great interest that one of my sources in Canberra Australia sent me a piece from the Weekly Times, in Melbourne, a Rupert Murdoch, News Corp. publication. It was a very interesting piece about the evolution of the global the economic space over the last few years. After our group took a look at this we decided by Saturday afternoon it was a very interesting piece of satirical comedy, with a great connection to reality and obviously written by a brilliant creative writer. This left us rather confused, where the hell did News Corp. get the ability to write with such fresh and brilliant creative approach.

The writer of this piece can hold their own next to people like Jon Stuart, Tina Fey, Barry Crimmins, Clifford Tasner and be easily be hired for the crew on Saturday Night Live. 

Yesterday we received information from the source in Canberra that solved our dilemma, Murdoch's group doesn't write most of the stuff, they sweep it up with phone tapping. This presented another challenge, with News Corp's little phone tapping enterprise, they must operate globally, and rival the NSA’s capability.

A quick phone call to an old colleague, who is the senior communications expert at a world-class, Menlo Park think tank, provided the answer. His opinion was from first-hand knowledge, is that News Corp. hired four young computer whiz kids to make their job easier. They retained high school seniors from Palo Alto high school, who had a reputation of being computer science geniuses. In rather short order they created a back door into AT&T's room 641A at 611 Folsom Street in San Francisco.

So what's in room 641A? Well the room is filled with rack after rack of Narus STA 6400 standalone traffic analyzers, which collect real-time customer communications. What did News Corp. get? The same ability that AT&T’s customer, the NSA has, the ability to vacuum up anybody's phone communication and deliver it as both a voice recording and a text transcript.

That brings us to another interesting event that happened yesterday, Kim Dotcom appeared in an Auckland, New Zealand courtroom and declared, "I am not a pirate". For some months now the FBI has had a Tiger Team working in New Zealand with police officials to bring down Kim Dotcom’s global criminal empire. Our Canberra sources informed us this morning that the FBI Tiger team has now moved on to Melbourne to assist the Victorian police in cracking Murdoch's global wire tapping empire... check back the Benny's blog and see this story unfold in the next few weeks.

What we have is an unknown Australian writer who should call Jon Stewart first thing today. 

... and here now is the news…

In light of today’s global financial woes, the World Bank has published these handy definitions of common economic structures.

SOCIALISM

  You have two cows. You give one to your neighbor. You both have milk.

COMMUNISM

  You have two cows. The State takes both and gives you some milk.

FASCISM

  You have two cows. The State takes both and sells you some milk.

NAZISM

  You have two cows. The State takes both and shoots you.

BUREAUCRATISM

  You have two cows. The State takes both, shoots one, milks the other, and then throws the milk away.

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.

MODERN VENTURE CAPITALISM

  You have two cows. 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 your 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 says the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more.

You sell one cow to buy a new president of the USA, leaving you with nine cows. No balance sheet provided with the release. The public then buys your bull.

A GREEK CORPORATION

  You have two cows. You borrow against the cows from the Germans. You kill the cows and make souvlaki. You can’t pay the interest, so the Germans lend you more money. You can’t pay the interest so the Germans lend you more money...

AN ITALIAN CORPORATION

 You have two cows. You don’t know where they are. You decide to have lunch.

AN AMERICAN CORPORATION

  You have two cows. You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows. Later, you hire a consultant to analyse why the cow has dropped dead.

A  FRENCH CORPORATION

  You have two cows. You go on strike, organize a riot, and block the roads, because you want three cows.

A  CHINESE CORPORATION

  You have two cows. You have 300 people milking them. You claim you have full employment and high bovine productivity. You arrest the journalist who reported the real situation.

AN AUSTRALIAN CORPORATION

  You have two cows. Business seems pretty good. You close the office and go and have a few beers to celebrate.

A NEW ZEALAND CORPORATION

  You have two cows. The one on the left looks very attractive.