Can Obama and his team crush Wal-Mart?
Today's Financial News - Posted June 17, 2009
Americans love to hate Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT), but it is a retailer we would most certainly miss if it were suddenly gone. Could Obama and his market manipulators determine it is too big to fail?
By Andrew Snyder, TodaysFinancialNews.com
Baltimore — (TFN): I am not the kind of guy that would ever get a tattoo. The company’s media advisor once told me I have a perfect face for radio. Why would I want to mess with that kind of success by spreading blue ink across my body?
But if I was going to succumb to an artist’s electric needles, there are just two phrases I could remotely envision having permanently ironed onto my skin.
#1: A man just can’t sit around.
#2: Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.
You would understand the message contained in the first phrase if you witnessed the engineering catastrophe in my garage over the weekend and the ensuing excuse I laid on to my bewildered wife.
The second is certainly the most topical phrase. While few folks have anything to do with Reaganomics tattooed on their body, it aptly describes my disdain for the current growth of the nanny-state attitude in Washington. If all our representatives saw that simple inaugural quote from1981 every time they buttoned their starched shirts, this nation would no doubt be a better place.
But government breeds government so you get what we have, regulations on top of regulations.
In this week’s episode of Hope and Change, Obama is hard at work to create more oversight of anything financial, from exotic derivatives to the credit cards we use at the pump. The president’s main goal? To ensure no business ever grows to a size deemed “too big to fail.”
It is an interesting, politically motivated notion, but the hypocrisy is mind blowing.
While Washington drives by the rear-view mirror and focuses on the banking sector, I am intrigued by what Capitol Hill might think of another of the world’s largest companies, Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT).
Is Wally World too big to fail?
By current measures, especially anything politically driven, the answer is an astounding yes.
Walk into any Wal-Mart and you will see its everyday low prices are a necessary subsidy to almost every class of working Americans. Imagine the toll if we all suddenly had to transfer our business to, dare I say it, Target (NYSE:TGT).The short-term inflation spike would crash computers and throw the Fed into a flat-out tizzy.
And how about the suppliers?
We have all heard of the companies desperately reliant on Wal-Mart’s all-or-nothing demands. There are dozens of small firms that absolutely depend on a chunk of the Walton family’s $400 billion in annual revenues.
If Wal-Mart would suddenly close up shop, the supplier fallout would be horrific. Just Monday, Oil-Dry (NYSE:ODC) lost one of its largest customer (no word if it is Wal-Mart) and share price plunged by nearly 30%. The calamity would be many times worse if the world’s largest retailer pulled back its purchase orders.
Has Wal-Mart grown too big to fail? You bet it has.
Will Washington have the guts to stick to its word and dismantle “key” players in a similar situation?
All I have to say is you get what you vote for.
If Capitol Hill passes the kind of legislation making the rounds this week, there is no limit to the government’s power. We let them take over just about every other key sector. We might as well let them have Wal-Mart too.
Next Article: What’s left to fuel the trucking industry? Not the teamsters…
3 Responses to “Can Obama and his team crush Wal-Mart?”
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June 17th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
I like walmart much much much better than obama and his gang
October 24th, 2009 at 11:03 am
Wal Mart’s business model is not like the banksters who took their “heads we win big bonuses when our ultra-risky financial bets pay off, tails the taxpayers eat the catastrophic losses when our bets go sour” show on the road last year and bulldozed a dazed Congress into coughing up on pain of riots in the streets and marshal law if they wouldn’t roll over pronto.
This is not free market capitalism, it ’s rule by state-favored kleptocrats, a continuous rule from Paulson under Bush to tax cheat Geithner under BO, and chronic tax scofflaw Rangel, enabled by rentiers Reid and Pelosi telling the little people that it’s their patriotic duty to pay the taxes that Rangel has so far avoided with impunity. Both the GOP and the Democrats are in the tank with the banksters, and “the public” is rolling over as long as they can deliver all the entitlements that have been voted in over the years… which may not be much longer.
January 9th, 2010 at 11:15 am
Ever wonder why Walmart has been so relentlessly targeted by the media? The answer to this question is another series of questions:
Who are the banksters?
Who controls the media?
Are majority shares of Walmart still owned by the Waltons and if so, who else might want them?
Has Walmart become a threat to the global financial establishment?
Hmmmmmm?