INDEPENDENT NEWS

Satire: Bovine Capitalism Around The World

Published: Wed 10 Jul 2002 10:54 AM
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...
The Scoop Editor
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