Correspondence
CORRESPONDENCE Correction found a gimmick, namely yelling foot more often than not. We have Another parishioner didn't just list Of course, I should know better, "liberal" at the top of his lungs...
...Imagine devoting most of one's spiritual time and energy to quibbling over the correct translation of the consecration formula or whether it is right or wrong to pray in the company of non-Catholics...
...By replacing one set of managers with another, mergers permit more rapid or different responses to these changes...
...gathering utterly devoid of majesty, sense ("Downey's Syndrome," TAS, and I have yet to see an argument Her representative parishioner was "an and totally oriented to flattering man August 1988...
...Stein has indeed missed the boat, and missed it completely...
...But, of course, there is always a day of reckoning...
...it will certainly be less than if the firm produces more desirable flavors such as chocolate or vanilla...
...Amon confuses a writer's distance from his subject with ridicule...
...I am not even going to seriously answer such a bizarre hypothesis as anchovy ice cream vs...
...This reminds me of the Alcoholics Anonymous argument that those who go back to drinking are not evidence of failure on the part of the "program" because they obviously went off the program when they resumed drinking...
...Consider, for example, a firm whose capital consists of a single machine that produces ice cream...
...There's a photograph of the archbishop right out in the social room, along with quires of Lefebvrite literature...
...The efficient market was a lovely theory, made a lot of skeptics rich, and it might certainly work if there were full disclosure, honest and energetic analysis, and no rigging of bids...
...The guests aren't allowed to do point...
...Naturally, I do not think that Boone Pickens works for the investment bankers knowingly and exclusively...
...Colonel Summers asseverates that the policy of containment has served us well...
...pondered the high proportion of young Yes, we believe the way to hell is wide more or less what he appears to be: a Let's keep in mind that by taking the people...
...I have her choice of modifiers...
...If the Lefebvrites' chief complaint were the loss of their beloved Latin liturgy or the infestation of professional malcontents in mid-level church bureaucracy, they would be a more sympathetic lot...
...But to compare us to entertainment business, has finally managed to shoot themselves in the ing their resentments against change...
...Amon, you can't be serious in contending that St...
...These are the elements that have led to the present mess in this world, and that, together with the wishful belief that we can hold the Soviets at bay forever, have probably doomed this country and Western civilization...
...We have Another parishioner didn't just list Of course, I should know better, "liberal" at the top of his lungs while enough trouble with our public image traditionalist objections to the Novus Senator James Danforth Quayle isn't shaking his fist at anybody he doesn't without adopting a man who presents Ordo words of consecration, he a III and can't be one because his like...
...If the firm produces only anchovy flavored ice cream, I suspect that its value will not be very high...
...These responses to economic change help maintain U.S...
...Stein's misunderstanding of the role of markets in valuing firms and the role of mergers and takeovers in this process, it is not surprising that his own explanation of why mergers take place would be so absurd...
...Low Allen...
...Don't let the media fool you...
...Colonel Summers's arguments remind me of other popular attitudes today...
...There is, of course, a legal and moral dimension to the taking of value away from stockholders and bondholders by fiduciaries for those people...
...O'Rourke moves blithely from one Third World war Van zone to another...
...Well, I think not...
...but I certainly doubt that it can happen without the kind of shot in the arm that would accompany the ascension of, say, North Korea or Poland from the Soviet orbit...
...any "excommunication...
...If any of your readers would like a free introductory packet of literature, they can write us at: Exodus International, PO Box 2121, San Rafael, CA 94912...
...Stein correctly argues that such popular explanations for mergers and takeovers as the low price of the dollar, the alleged inability of firms to create good will for new products or new brands, and the belief that antitrust enforcement may be more vigorous under future administrations do not hold up under scrutiny...
...And please, Mr...
...If cerfather's, who died valiantly in WW II...
...Commission should so clearly see his role as shill for Morgan, Stanley and First Boston and Drexel Burnham Lambert...
...a red neck New Brunswick, New Jersey ty of the action against Lefebvre, guarding keeps up, it's going to be remains red whether it's covered by a because neither the scorn of the world awfully hard to persuade less than yachting jacket or a Mort T-shirt...
...It would be difficult for me to mock the Tridentine mass, for which I have a great remembered fondness and, as I made clear in the article, admiration...
...and the only way these "raiders" can gain from acquisitions is by reorganizing or redeploying their targets' assets more efficiently and profitably than the targets' incumbent managers...
...But that intellectual...
...According to Colonel Summers, this is the ultimate to which we can aspire from now on...
...chocolate and vanilla...
...the general opinion is that Downey is Menshevik...
...Does Mr...
...Amon, I find attending the English version of the Novus Ordo mass in most parish churches a dispiriting experience, with the congregation's attention systematically deflected away from the Holy Eucharist and into the realm of the touchy-feely...
...Daniel Amon Alexandria, Virginia Charlotte Low Allen replies: Mr...
...It is a denial of the idea that we shouting, and arm-waving that they 1988...
...Low (or "dignity" (pun intended) than tradivative movement here, I can say that If this is conservatism, I'm a is it Ms...
...After the war the American people were depressed and resentful that our men had been forced to lay down their lives without an opportunity to win...
...State, call (716) 837-2475 Or write to: Prometheus Books 700 East Amherst St...
...In Cuba...
...Maintenance cannot be deferred forever, and eventually companies have to be run as if they were in it for the long run...
...The author quotes Clausewitz, but it was Clausewitz who pointed out that the belligerent who fights a defensive war must win every battle, while the belligerent who fights an offensive war need win only the last...
...But as to their knowing how big business, especially big finance, works today, the studio people have it all over the folks at 7th and Pennsylvania...
...When he states that we can't fight to victory because of the nuclear standoff, I am put in mind of today's recommended cure for crime: bar your windows, put double bolts on all your doors, never go out at night without a crowd around you, and hope the criminals leave you alone...
...Harry G. Summers's article ("Conservatives, Containment, and Vietnam," TAS, June 1988) will undoubtedly receive the replies which its seriousness merits, from those who are far better qualified than this layman...
...like the writer, read Elisabeth Kiibleras proof of unwarranted privilege...
...this is the oldest with her, and found what she wanted a gloomy lot...
...Apparently American will, once broken, cannot be mended...
...We've I don't buy it...
...Pyne, Archie Bunker, and, yeah, Joe enough backbone to take a crack at the tam "nuances" give the writer a head-Obviously, things have reached a pretty McCarthy...
...Stein asks rhetorically why a company that previously sold at $26 a share could be considered a bargain at $55 a share, or, if it is a bargain at $55, how could the market have been so grossly incorrect, he reveals a fundamentally flawed perception of how the stock market values firms and the role of mergers and takeovers in augmenting their value...
...Naturally, I am quite confident that the LBO people and the investment bankers work together to defraud the small stockholder and appropriate "value," however artificially created, which by law and by the workings of capitalism should belong to the stockholders, for themselves, the insiders...
...If the market perceives that the acquisition of the assets by the competing management team will raise the profitability of the firm, its share value will rise...
...A firm thatis valued under current management at $26 a share may be considered by a competing management team to be a bargain at $55 a share (or for that matter, at $155 a share), if the competing management team believes that it can more efficiently deploy or restructure the firm's assets...
...to nuclear ash heaps, not caring that we would in return have done the same to their cities...
...State residents add sales tax...
...Athanasius is not really a Lefebvrite parish...
...R. Dunn ioners there do indeed reject the validily...
...Based on Mr...
...The current value of $26 a share is not an incorrect value, it merely reflects the returns from the current uses of the firm's assets...
...O'Rourke is, as everyone knows, quite funny...
...The value of that firm depends on the profitability of the ice cream it produces...
...The FTC is primarily an organization supposed to enforce law based on some moral principles of fairness for the ordinary citizen...
...in a set that gives the distinct impres- coolness toward traditional Catholics, "denial" she sees in traditionalist —Kent Owen sion of being an inquisitorial chamber, to report on a "Lefebvrite" parish behavior is not the classic first stage of Bloomington, Indiana rattle them sufficiently through insults, ("Circumschism," TAS, September grief...
...As to Chairman Oliver's snippy little crack about Hollywood, I believe I have written more than he cares to read about Hollywood's errors of perception...
...150 pages ISBN 0-87975-447-8 Cloth $19.95 Call toll free (800) 421-0351 In N.Y...
...it's a shame demagogic trick in the book, as Mr...
...When Mr...
...And why not...
...The stage had already been set for Vietnam...
...Marin might Lefebvre and is therefore untouched by decent man in public life—not since way) to gape at cars being crushed...
...continued on page 53) THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1988 9 CORRESPONDENCE (continued from page 9) Manicheans or Jansenists is worse than a cheap shot...
...If, as Colonel Summers asserts, the "A modern classic, an important work that fills an extremely sensitive gap in the literature of liberty .. . the book moves from one outstanding passage and insight to another...
...Nothing exposes the writer like the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the it had to be the Spectator, double so Marin should be well aware...
...In Vietnam where it was practiced in theory as well as reality, since our forces were not permitted to play by the same rules as the enemy...
...pended by populists like Mike Royko What Downey is doing is simply giv- clown as soon as possible—last week Naturally, such dim bulbs have never, who seem to regard any sign of lineage ing the left another bogeyman to point wouldn't be quick enough...
...I'll start with my name...
...In at and say, "This is a conservative, how It might be worthwhile to continue Ross, but they have read the Catechism point of fact, the senator was named do you like him...
...As to the failure of capital markets, how can anyone whose eyes are open defend them as efficient pricing mechanisms any longer, when they consistently fail to value companies at even close to their break-up value ("break-up" when interim cash flow is king, of course) even in markets which have a time horizon of about two hours, and value large companies almost exclusively on the basis of takeover and resale value...
...Forget for now the man can't get the matter right...
...A cure for cancer would be nice as well...
...But they have a host of other nitpicking grievances with, of all people, the genuinely traditionalist Pope John Paul II...
...TAS, September 1988), Benjamin J. Stein notes that "unless I somehow missed something" there is no reason to believe that mergers and takeovers create value...
...and besides, it would be immoral to defend our life's accumulations at the risk of killing someone who only wants to hock them for a fix...
...Hilarious and devastating...funny, outrageous, perceptive stuff, written with brio...
...Just what did we "win" in Korea...
...Laissez Faire Libertarian Catalog Resentment Against Achievement Understanding the Assault Upon Ability by Robert Sheaffer Brilliantly illuminates the struggle between the morality of achievement, emphasizing tolerance, liberty, and accomplishment, and the morality of resentment, thriving on envy, hostility, and social parasitism...
...There is plenty of evidence that any firm can seem to run more profitably if legions of workers are fired, unions are broken, equipment is allowed to go unreplaced, maintenance is deferred, and interim cash flow targets are worshipped as totems...
...Too bad she couldn't find some- seen pews emptied, seminaries closed, sey, the epicenter of this particular this, and Downey himself isn't one in a polyester leisure suit or a and homosexuals afforded more firestorm, and involved in the conser- interested...
...must prove our obedience to the Pope Down with Downey lose whatever shreds of dignity they J. K. Galbraith or Robert Lekachman by denying that faith, or that we must I've been reading in every rag in the may have brought with them, and then with the definitive review of Reagan- follow the hierarchy in its embrace of country that Morton Downey repre- turn the crowd loose...
...These two ladies have better things to do...
...But these arguments are little more than strawmen...
...to find...
...But "Let us fight on to the ultimate stalemate...
...I have read Professor Jensen's major article on takeovers, and I am certainly familiar with the vast lore of apology for the deep pocket guys and gals who run America's merger machinery...
...The effect of these undignified liturgical customs on the male of the Catholic species has been devastating...
...Moreover, the conclusions found in two much more exhaustive reviews of the academic literature, one by Michael Jensen and Richard Ruback and the other by Gregg Jarrell, James Brickley, and Jeffry Netter, completely contradict those drawn by Weidenbaum and Vogt...
...And I don't think he was talking about the kind of nerve that assumes that our nuclear deterrent cannot possibly defend us from Soviet chastisement...
...The Baltimore Sun "OUTRAGEOUS...
...In my view, he misunderstands how real-world asset and "management" markets function...
...Thousands of us are now former homosexuals, and enjoying every minute of it...
...In the "market for corporate control" managers compete for the right to control corporate assets...
...The colonel tells us that once American will had been "broken," what happened on the battlefield was irrelevant...
...Homosexuals are coming out of the lifestyle in unprecedented numbers...
...Yet somehow we are to convince the American people that they should wax enthusiastic about a no win war of this sort...
...Thus it is no wonder that Lefebvrites, young and old, seem a mite peculiar...
...Consider the image: rude, Mouth...
...National Review "A WELL-LUBRICATED TOUR OF HELL jo u kind since . ective lun tic . ?We haven't seen subtilt jsm of this high-ocane, full Hunter Thompson...
...And Lefebvritis nor an army of post-conciliar canon perfect persons from Huntington, In- finally, consider the technique...
...This trick has been watching the show, though, if only to of the Council of Trent and what it says in memory of a Deke friend of his pulled plenty of times before, as see Joe see who it is who finally works up about the consecration formula...
...Allen...
...We retrieved the status quo antebellum at the cost of thousands of American troops killed, while the Soviets (our ultimate enemy, let's face it) lost some weapons and a lot of Chinese...
...What should we expect next...
...Chairman Oliver may recite his fairy tales about the market, but under the pretty language, an awful lot of money is being stolen from a lot of innocent people who thought the FTC and the SEC were there to protect them...
...The may not be such a bad idea after all...
...ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS United States is to be limited by the nature of the situation to wars of stalemate forevermore, then by his own arguments we are doomed to ultimate defeat...
...It's an exposure of the writer's own ignorance, of her inability to distinguish between 2,000 years of development and twenty years of revolution...
...Of course by that time I suppose the Soviets would have sulkily reduced Washington, Chicago, and New York...
...Personally, I don't know whether the American people can be raised to their senses...
...Stein's "ignorant dealmaker" theory is one idea that could have plausibility only in the halls of Hollywood movie studios...
...Gag me with a spoon...
...Randall Robinson on Jonas the modernism condemned as the synsents "true conservatism" until I'm sick begins to act like the Voice of Reason Savimbi...
...He points out at the end of his article that students in the War College stated unequivocally that they would not send their sons and daughters to war unless we had a plan for winning...
...Does he really think that, if the President and our military leaders could have stormed Hanoi, American will would have remained in shards...
...The parishRobert Bork—been treated so shabbi- "Wall Street suits and Rutgers mini- —J...
...Bob Davies Executive Director Exodus International San Rafael, California THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1988 55...
...Time "HILARIOUS" "A hair-raising /y hi/arious update of Mark Tvva in s Innocents Abroad tour...
...Takeover Markets In his article "Takeovers and Acquisitions: Who's Responsible...
...Which Downey does is to sit his guests down Low Allen, who has already shown her abandon the 2,000-year-old faith...
...The en, turned into a Protestant communal Marin, who usually shows a lot more dozen times since it went on the air, traditional movement is "gruesome...
...Buffalo, NY 14215 Add $2.25 postage & handling...
...Hereafter, if this sort of black- cons" don't change this any...
...Roy A. Childs, Jr...
...But if the writer wasn't at least a little suspicious when the reigning Pontiff invited all "religions" of the world to desecrate Catholic altars at Assisi (by no means an aberration in this pontificate), then our arguments with her would be as "fruitless" as hers with Father Ringrose...
...Attending the most beautiful thing this side of heavthat the perpetrator was Richard watched the program perhaps a half- Mass was an "eerie experience...
...That is plain old human pride, which often "goeth before a fall" (keep that in mind, ye who believe most of us will end up at the Big Barbecue...
...never demonstrated the combination of guts and goofiness that O'Rourke displays on this guided tour...
...thesis of all heresies by St...
...Was she and the way to heaven is narrow, and guy who, having spent the last two adage "the enemy of my enemy is my hoping to find nothing but older that more people lose their souls than decades scuffling on the edge of the friend" too literally, conservatives have cranks left behind by modernity, exhal- save them...
...The bogus numeral is ap- mob...
...If the Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission really thinks that proves anything, I shudder for the republic...
...In Nicaragua...
...Space does not allow for a detailed discussion of the Weidenbaum and Vogt piece...
...Chairman Oliver states it with touchingly childish faith, and I could almost admire his innocence...
...Amon's letter raises so many points that it is hard to know where to begin responding...
...I was frightened then by the unquestioning acceptance of the most outlandish consumerist arguments by the FTC brass...
...Was she disappointed...
...Kirkus Reviews ..04600MF "SHALLOW, FOUL-MOUTHED, TASTELESS AND SEXIST...
...Oliver's letter, I am even more alarmed that the chariman of the Federal Trade...
...Stein dismisses the claim that takeovers increase value by citing a recent article by Murray Weidenbaum and Stephen Vogt: Contrary to the impression left by Mr...
...Given what I take to be Mr...
...Stein, the Weidenbaum and Vogt article does not present any new evidence with respect to the profitability of takeovers...
...also tional Catholics...
...As I said in my article, there is fortunately no way to turn the Tridentine rite into a social workers' confab...
...Chairman Oliver's letter therefore makes me deeply sad at what has become of any idea of allegiance to fairness or to the small holder of anything...
...6.95 pap A Morgan Entrekin Book Atlantic Monthly Press books are distributed by Little, Brown and Company (Inc...
...For some reason the "best thinking" of today always works in favor of the bad guys...
...We've seen jump on the bandwagon...
...In other words, the talk-show mindless belligerence as typical of the "solemnly" assured the writer of them, father's name is James C. Quayle equivalent of Monday night wrestling, movement...
...Pius X. in the head...
...Consider the audience: the himself with the Guardian Angels, who fact that St...
...Athanasius has no formal has been Dan Quayle's lot all through same pack of yokels that trot down to act as "bodyguards" on the set— relationship with Archbishop Marcel the plaguey campaign: seldom has a the local raceway (a big sponsor, by the another item that Mr...
...Russell W Martin Orange, California Straights on Parade I was delighted to read of our ex-gay organization in your September issue ("Gays on Parade," by Tom Bethell...
...Stein actually expect us to believe that such individuals as T. Boone Pickens, Carl Icahn, and Sir James Goldsmith are so charitable or so unwise as to have dedicated their careers to financing the vacation homes of investment bankers...
...Even major LBO honchos are by now owning up to the plain truth that today's LBO is done mainly for the up-front fees and the short-term junking, not for any more efficient use of capital...
...However, a thorough critique of this article by Laurence Schumann and Robert Stoner recently published in the California Management Review, Spring 1988 (the Weidenbaum and Vogt article was published in the Summer 1987 issue of this journal) casts great doubt on many of their conclusions...
...lectors, cantors, Eucharistic ministers, and three-fourths of the congregation consist, of middle-aged ladies in sensible shoes and wraparound skirts...
...Not that this will be an easy ache, better minds than hers have pass when even a former fellow towns- threatening, loud-mouthed, and anti- matter now that Mort has allied fought over them...
...Being from New Jer- ner...
...What Why did TAS assign or allow Charlotte lawyers will ever convince them to diana to run for high office...
...I guess now we know why...
...Allen, or Ms...
...Like Mr...
...As William Buckley pointed out decades ago, it's going to take nerve to win this one...
...Apparently, for some reason which is never addressed, only the enemy, in this age of nuclear "standoff," has the privilege of advancing, and of occupying capitals...
...competitiveness in international markets...
...And yes, we have our quarrels with John Paul II...
...he is also damn smart?how else could a conservative get an expense account from Rolling Stone...
...Get the rather than worshipping God...
...rather, it is a survey of a small number of articles previously published in various academic journals...
...presented in any kind of coherent man- elderly man in a shiny suit...
...Their husbands, if they have them, are probably at home reading Hagar the Horrible...
...That he then omics...
...is not the sort of cry that is likely to raise the American people out of their present lethargy, or overcome their hedonistic will to resist any attempt at resistance...
...54 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1988 THE MAN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL CALLS "THE FUNNIEST WRITER IN AMERICA" GOES INTERNATIONAL "GIFTED WISE GUY" "He is also one of the funniest writers in America, or anywhere else he may go to satisfy his desperate need to extract humor from folly and chaos...
...Stein rightfully rejects...
...Where has it so served us...
...wash their hands of this particular personal demon...
...Stalemate is not winning, and the very war to which the colonel points as a paradigm should prove that...
...That time—of course—is long after the LBO guys and the investment bankers have gotten back fifty times their money, when the public owns the company again...
...I suppose it was inevitable in moderating the proceedings doesn't The writer brought her contempt Yes, we traditionalists sometimes are that a conservative magazine would impress me one iota...
...The fact is that there is no instance of any long term more efficient running of any large corporation after its takeover by management or LBO firms or anyone else...
...As a result, it's not surprising that the primary point of Mr...
...In many a suburban house of worship on Sunday, Rosemary Radford Reuther's "Womanchurch" has become a living reality...
...Conservatives at large evidently reminding her of the wide-("Rooting for Quayle," TAS, Novem- complete with T-shirts and howling ought to take their cue from Joisey and eyed way every crackpot explains his ber 1988...
...ity Fair "DAMN War "P.J...
...The point here is that the value of the firm depends not only on its ownership of capital equipment and other assets, but also on the ability and foresight of its managers to make the most of them...
...Jonathan Yardley The Washington Post Fl LIDA #1.1111116121111111111111116 ROURKE °IN EL PI O'ROURKE In which our intrepid reporter travels to the world's worst places and asks "What's funny about this...
...Daniel Oliver, Chairman Federal Trade Commission Washington, D.C...
...It is also passing strange to defy the Pope in so serious a matter as the ordination of bishops and then deny (that's right) that any schism exists...
...matron with a blue rinse...
...This kind of efficiency-enhancing redeployment is particularly important in an economy like ours that in recent years has experienced tremendous change...
...The want to think about...
...it's "Mrs...
...Firms and individuals purchase the services of investment bankers for one reason—to make money for themselves...
...Conservatives and Containment Col...
...In Southern California, it seems practically mandatory for the entire congregation to hold hands during the Pater Noster...
...And even the Dr...
...Oh yes, he's wickedly amusing...
...Then, presumably, all will be hunky-dory and we can hold the beast at bay forever...
...We must not take the offensive against the Communists because they may blast us out of existence in a fit of pique, just as it would be rash to face down a burglar or rapist with a .357magnum, because he might get angry and hurt us...
...It is difficult to see Mother Teresa—or Mother Angelica—as followers of Marcel Lefebvre...
...Important industries have been deregulated, the price of oil skyrocketed and crashed, a great technological revolution began and is continuing—in computers, telecommunications, bioengineering, and many other areas, and America has increasingly become part of a highly competitive world economy...
...Benjamin J. Stein replies: I worked for the FTC as a trial lawyer in the years 1971 to 1973...
...Still, it is a truism that it sometimes takes the layman to see the holes in the experts' theories, if only because they are not encumbered by the limitations in which those experts have been drilled...
...In addition, they also create value by transferring new technologies and innovations to those firms best poised to exploit them...
...Colonel Summers may state that containment has not been practiced in these places, since the Communists have been permitted to take fresh ground there...
...Stein's article, that mergers and takeovers are motivated by investment bankers—middlemen out to make money for themselves alone—makes even less sense than the exTHE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1988 53 planations for mergers that Mr...
Vol. 21 • December 1988 • No. 12
