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Despite a continuing and unresolved battle between hostile management factions, Wall Street remains bullish on the Uncle Sam Corp., with per-share prices rising to record levels while takeover rumors abound.
Some of the stock's current popularity is the result of the month-long stand-off between N. Leroy Gingrich and R.J. Dole, leaders on the 535-member board of directors, and W. Jefferson Clinton, chief executive officer.
The way they have things arranged right now during
this partial corporate shutdown,
explained Simon
Legree, a respected analyst at the Socially Irresponsible
Investment Group, is nothing short of brilliant for the
bottom line.
Legree pointed out that they're still collecting most
of their revenues, and they've got many of their employees
on the job -- but they're not paying them. So the corporate
net is soaring right now. The stock is a good buy.
This modern management procedure -- don't pay the help,
but keep them on the job anyway -- is something we
encourage every major company to try,
Legree said,
and it's refreshing to see one of the biggest companies
taking our advice. The 'Republican Revolution' has been
great for Uncle Sam Corp., and you'll see the Dow at 6,000
by February if this concept spreads.
Forcing people to go to work without paying them is
one of those things that made the company a great performer
in years past,
Legree continued, and even though
Uncle Sam has taken some wrong turns starting with the
Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, we're back on the right
track now.
Legree was optimistic about the future. For a long
time, Uncle Sam has been divided about whose backs the
corporate budget will be balanced on. Now we know. And if
the employees don't like it, what are they going to do
about it? File for unemployment, when states are shutting
down their unemployment offices? Go work for AT&T and
get laid off there?
Alexander Hamilton XIV, an analyst at Scrooge &
Marley, discounted the short-term benefits of the You
have to come to work but you may not paid
policy at
Uncle Sam, and said he was encouraged instead by Uncle
Sam's long-term commitment to contemporary management
principles.
For instance,
Hamilton said, the better
companies these days don't try to do everything in-house.
They out-source if the job can be done better and cheaper
somewhere else.
Here's Uncle Sam with some pressure to police the
Internet. And instead of doing it in-house, the way it
would have been done just a few years ago, they let the
German government decide what was and wasn't acceptable for
millions of American citizens who had used CompuServe for
Internet access.
Hamilton noted that Uncle Sam has some troublesome
provisions in the corporate charter that might conceivably
restrict the company's ability to determine what Americans
can see and read -- although, I should add that they
usually get around those troublesome charter restrictions
by claiming that they're acting on behalf of children.
But by out-sourcing this action to Germany, the
company nicely side-stepped those possible problems and
their potential for extended and expensive
litigation.
Hamilton also praised Uncle Sam for seeing its true profit centers during the current partial corporate shutdown.
Uncle Sam had been running its national park
subsidiary at a loss, even though there were substantial
profits being made by those gateway communities which
captured the majority of the tourist dollars.
Now Uncle Sam is charging Arizona $17,000 a day to
keep Grand Canyon open, and Arizona is glad to pay. I'm
sure we'll see more of this.
While Legree was excited by short-term prospects and Hamilton saw Uncle Sam as a good long-term investment, neither mentioned the take-over rumors that have also been driving Uncle Sam shares.
For years, we've been buying a senator here and a
congressman there as they came available on the market,
confessed a portfolio manager for the National Rifle
Association who refused to give her name, but now it
does look possible to take over the whole company, although
we would probably let it operate as a wholly owned
subsidiary, rather than merge it into our
operations.
But another potential buyer for Uncle Sam, the Christian Coalition, would insist on a full merger, said Judas Silverpiece, chief moneychanger at the coalition's temple.
Well, yes, we do seek a controlling interest in Uncle
Sam,
Silverpiece said last week. In the right hands,
ours, Uncle Sam Corp. could be a powerful force for
eliminating abortion, homosexuality, skepticism, tolerance
and thousands of other secular abominations.
Uncle Sam Corp. is ripe for a takeover,
Silverpiece concluded. We'll be doing our best to get
our hands on it, but we're not the only contenders. There
are big-time defense contractors and other suppliers who
want Uncle Sam to buy weapons that aren't needed, all sorts
of subsidized interests buying up shares -- face it,
everybody except the general public is interested in
getting control of Uncle Sam.
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