tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34598853.post8713697838434432125..comments2023-12-30T01:47:45.604-08:00Comments on servethepeople: ABC Learning and the privatisation of early childhoodUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34598853.post-62840855638839029472008-03-11T21:11:00.000-07:002008-03-11T21:11:00.000-07:00Like Icarus who flew too close to the sun, Eddie G...Like Icarus who flew too close to the sun, Eddie Groves has seen the wax wings of his $300 million ABC Learning empire melt away through overexposure to the heat of intensely speculative money-making. He has now been forced to sell every single share in the company, as has his wife Le Neve. Singapore sovereign wealth fund Temasek Holdings now owns about 14% of company shares, as does US investment bank Lazard Asset Management. While all the attention is on Eddie as an individual, the ABC Learning scandal shows the vulnerability of Australia's weak national bourgeois elements to the manipulations of imperialist finance capital. If we are ever to free ourselves from the many-skeined net of imperialist depenency and entrapment, it will be through a movement led by the working class.Mikehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01878524757860159914noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34598853.post-62062396188127558332008-02-27T17:40:00.000-08:002008-02-27T17:40:00.000-08:00Adele Ferguson in the Australian (28/2/08) (here: ...Adele Ferguson in the Australian (28/2/08) (here: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23287234-643,00.html) reveals that ABC issued $600 million in exploding convertible notes last year. These are options for shares that are not, as is normal practice, limited to a certain number of shares, but rather options for the purchase of $600 million worth of shares at current market prices. In other words, the cheaper the market price of the shares becomes, the more shares can be bought with the same amount of money. That is, if a share costs $6, then 100 million company shares can be bought through the exercise of the option embedded in the notes; if the price can be forced down to $1 each, then 600 million can be bought. If hedge funds have bought significant volumes of exploding convertible notes, and can short sell shares and/or force margin calls so that directors have to offload huge volumes of shares, then they can expercise their options through the ECNs to capture control of the company. All of these parasitic, non-productive practices are typical of the highest stage of capitalism in which finance itself is a commodity with its largest and most aggressive concentrations being located in the major imperialist powers, and the US in particular.<BR/><BR/>The papers also reveal today that the 30% tax rebate on child care provided by the federal government directly into the pockets of private child care providers is being lifted to 50% under the new Rudd Labor government.<BR/><BR/>Why? The provision of free and universally available child care should be a responsibility of the government as a service to the community; rather than the current practice of lining the pockets of Eddie Groves and his wife and mates with a guaranteed, and increased, flow of tax-payer dollars.Mikehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01878524757860159914noreply@blogger.com