Viability
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2. A business, product or asset that, once acquired and paid off, will produce consistent cash flow over its lifespan. A cash cow requires little investment capital and perennially provides positive cash flows, which can be allocated to other divisions within the corporation. These cash generators may also use their money to buy back shares on the market or pay dividends to shareholders.
Cash cow is a metaphor for a dairy cow that produces milk over the course of its life and requires little maintenance. A dairy cow is an example of a cash cow, as after the initial capital outlay has been paid off, the animal continues to produce milk for many years to come.
This swell and then my throat’s warm collapse—and love’s holler collapsed . . . mouthful, full of the warming, oh, valentine. Long, and left better collapsed along the lover. Warm, and left better, collapsed along my caw. The caws, thermonuclear, left open left seeping around us.
Of the 15 current and former slaves the Guardian interviewed during the investigation, 10 had witnessed a fellow fisherman murdered by his boat captain or net master. Ei Ei Lwin, the Burmese fisherman, claims he saw “18 to 20 people killed in front of me.”
But where are the animals of actual praise. Where are the animals of actual mercy. Where is the coin in the animal. Where is the coin in the infant and where is the infant in the infant animal.
—John of the Cross
I want fusion, as in a joining together. As in confusion. As in thermonuclear. I want to become mixed together with something infinite, together at my smallest and my greatest part. Fused, for example, with exponential growth. Fused with exponential decay—or fused with the passage of fish across time. Fused with the generous field, leaning always toward me. Or fused with the animals of increase.
—John of the Cross
From the standpoint of the entrepreneur making an investment in slaves, the basic problems involved in determining profitability are analytically the same as those met in determining the returns from any other kind of capital investment. The acquisition of a slave represented the tying-up of capital in what has appropriately been called a roundabout method of production. Like the purchase of any capital, a slave purchase was made in the anticipation of gaining higher returns than are available from less time-consuming or capital-using methods. This model is particularly applicable in the present case, because slave investments, like the forests or wine cellars of classic capital theory, produced a natural increase with the passage of time.
Daydream: Wire is wrapped around my torso—line exactly under line exactly under line from my collarbone to my hips. No skin shows the wire is so exactly wrapped and I can just barely expand my lungs to breathe. With the natural passage of time the infant will grow. This is a kind of natural increase. As the infant grows it will be crushed. The wire will not give and I will not give.
Stillborn god, will you rip your own body to hold your share of what hurts—as Columbus ran the Santa Maria aground a reef of Hispaniola. On Christmas Day she foundered, and Columbus built La Navidad, a military fortress, from her remains. So even in human terms we are no longer what we were. The comfort we need is inhuman. The curtain of water, incessant. The curtain of water, incessant.
Goodwill: An intangible asset that arises as a result of the acquisition of one company by another for a premium value. The value of a company’s brand name, solid customer base, good customer relations, good employee relations and any patents or proprietary technology represent goodwill. Goodwill is considered an intangible asset because it is not a physical asset like buildings or equipment. The goodwill account can be found in the assets portion of a company’s balance sheet.
Where there is no goodwill, put acquisition. Put incessant proprietary technology. Where there is no goodwill, put cannibalization. Put host. Put incarnation. Put transmutation. Where there is no love, put abstract animals. Where there is no love, put lipstick. Put mascara. Put lipstick down the throat of the rat. Put hairspray up the nose of the rat. Put hairspray into the lungs of the rat. Where there is no love, put lipstick on abstract animals.
—John of the Cross
Either the infant is assimilated or else he is annihilated. Either the infant is extracted or else he is disgorged. Asleep on top of me his mouth is soggy and open, so open my heart hurts. A fetal curl pressed into me, face in my armpit because if he can’t smell me he can’t sleep. He roots, grunts, until my nipple is in his mouth. Still asleep, he rubs my other breast while he sucks. He is not hidden from me because I won’t understand but hidden from me absolutely.
Jennifer Lopez: A slang technical analysis term referring to a rounding bottom in a stock’s price pattern. This term got its name from Jennifer Lopez’s curvy figure; she is often criticized (or praised) for her round bottom.
Traders like the rounding bottom in a stock pattern because it can be an indication of a positive market reversal, meaning expectations are gradually shifting from bearish to bullish.
Some were shot, others were tied up to stones and thrown into the sea, and one was ripped apart, he says. A fisherman hated his captain and tried to beat him to death. But the captain escaped by jumping into the sea. The other captains came and pinned the fisherman down. Then they tied up his hands and legs to four separate boats and pulled him apart.
There is a pink light through Tamar’s veil. There is a stone quality to time—when the poorest cannot make their bodies good. A woman’s body is a list of hard facts. How it feels and what it has done shivering with seed, I am his mother. Also lifted, also laughing, also smeared across the substances.
A bear’s body is a list of hard facts about her body. A bull’s body is a list of hard facts about her body. A man’s body is a list of hard facts about her body. A man’s body should outperform its competition.
—John of the Cross
Angelina Jolie Stock Index: An index made up of a selection of stocks from companies associated with actress Angelina Jolie. Seen as one of the world’s most influential celebrities, some analysts believe that companies connected with Jolie will outperform their competition.
The index was created by Fred Fuld of Stockerblog.com; it includes the stocks of movie studios and producers that have had a connection with Angelina Jolie, such as Sony (NYSE: SNE), Viacom (NYSE: VIA) and Time Warner (NYSE: TWX). Because Jolie’s films usually earn large box-office revenues, the companies that produce these movies should have higher profits.
Index, put actual bears, put actual bulls, put actual cows, put actual lipstick on the actual animals of real earth.
—John of the Cross
Index, put the shivering seed in earth, put the climbing vine around the torso of the golden goose, put Jack in the pot of the giant or put Hansel in the pot of the witch or put infants in the pot of actual earth.
—John of the Cross
Index, I don’t have the authority.
—John of the Cross
The inefficiency argument is not supported very securely. There were slaves employed in cotton factories throughout the South. Slaves were used in the coal mines and in the North Carolina lumbering operations. In the ironworks at Richmond and on the Cumberland River, slaves comprised a majority of the labor force. Southern railroads were largely built by southern slaves. Crop diversification, or the failure to achieve diversification, appears to have been a problem of entrepreneurship rather than of the difficulties of training slaves. In the face of the demand for cotton and the profits to be had from specializing in this single crop, it is hardly difficult to explain the single-minded concentration of the planter.
Index, in the face of the difficulty of training slaves, put crop diversification. In the face of the difficulty of training slaves, put demand for cotton, put single-minded concentration. Put a body between four boats. Put your hands in the gesture of prayer. Put your body in the gesture of cowering. Put your face in the expression of an animal.
—John of the Cross
In the glow of the planet earth night-light the i
nfant has dissolved earth’s favor: he is a speck among the specks we’ve missed. The crystal fringe of the wedding dress is a simple column of glass blown from the volcano—infant. He who could emerge whole into the world. Earth, the sky is your white knight—his hands are cupped toward you in the ancient gesture of need.
Globalization: The tendency of investment funds and businesses to move beyond domestic and national markets to other markets around the globe, thereby increasing the interconnectedness of different markets. Globalization has had the effect of markedly increasing not only international trade, but also cultural exchange.
The advantages and disadvantages of globalization have been heavily scrutinized and debated in recent years. Proponents of globalization say that it helps developing nations “catch up” to industrialized nations much faster through increased employment and technological advances. Critics of globalization say that it weakens national sovereignty and allows rich nations to ship domestic jobs overseas where labor is much cheaper.
Daydream: I am lying naked on my back on the floor. Strangers walk through the room, one after another, and step on my belly. They are wearing white clothes and no shoes and some balance, bounce, then step off. Some stomp. My belly is huge. Exposed. I am a giant and made up almost only of my own eyes. As they pass over us, another, another, I can feel the infant’s legs arms head push out into my lungs and into my throat and against the cage of my bones stressed almost to cracking, another. Another in the light of the doorway. The line of people extends as far as I can see. At each step we are more deformed. The room is dark the strangers are endless and I don’t seem to stop them.
“Ghost boats”—unlicensed replicas of properly registered and licensed boats—make up as much as half of Thailand’s true fishing fleet, according to a 2011 International Organisation for Migration report.
“There’s a technique,” a high-ranking marine police officer in Kantang, on the Andaman coast, told the Guardian. “If you have 10 boats, you buy a licence for just two or three boats. Then you’ll have two boats with the same name, and two with no name.” He chuckles. “If they get stopped, they have a licence to show the authorities, but really it’s a fake licence.”
Lady Godiva Accounting Principles (LGAP): A theoretical set of accounting principles under which corporations would have to fully disclose all information, including that which often doesn’t get reported to investors under generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP).
These principles include disclosure of the following:
all off–balance sheet items
how new goodwill accounting rules (introduced in 2002) impact earnings per share (EPS)
the impact on EPS of stock options issued in lieu of salaries
how pension expenses are accounted for
This buzzword was coined by financial analyst Rick Wayman after the Enron bankruptcy.
According to legend, Lady Godiva was a woman who rode a horse naked through Coventry, England, in the 11th century in order to get her husband, the Lord of Coventry, to lift the heavy taxes on his people. The idea of LGAP is that just as the Lady provided “full disclosure” to help her fellow citizens, corporations must do the same thing with their financial disclosures to maintain their credibility with investors.
Daydream: Amidst all this lovemaking God and animals must enter, if she then crosses her thighs it becomes a “circle.” If, in the “mare’s trap,” which can only be done with practice, she grasps him like a mare so tightly that he cannot move.
Where there is no God, put full-disclosures. Where there is no circle, put full-disclosures, full-disclosures so tightly that you cannot move.
—John of the Cross
Slave longevity corresponds, of course, to the period for which a slave investment was made. Looking back at the data in Table 1, there is no reason to expect twenty-year-old Massachusetts Negroes to have a lower life-expectancy than Massachusetts whites, though both clearly lived longer than southern Negroes of the period. Taking all these factors into account, an estimate of thirty to thirty-five years of life-expectancy seems most plausible for twenty-year-old Negroes working as prime cotton hands on southern plantations in the period 1830–50, and a thirty-year life-expectancy will generally be used in the succeeding calculations.
Gush, the long pink ribbon. The long skin-pudding shaken out—my sympathy comes from my body. The baby’s old brain and new brain, without the sense burnt or built, are terrible into the light—or thoroughly we believe otherwise. The catastrophe of my body for the body I surround—the fish-human with a fever mark on its cheek. These are the years, “childbearing,” when things will live or die and inside of us. How still is this reciprocity: to let alone something that I might have touched.
This is capitalism at its worst, and it is supported by a dramatic alteration in the basic economic equation of slavery. Where an average slave in 1850 would have cost the equivalent of $40,000 in modern money, today’s slave can be bought for a few hundred dollars. This cheapness makes the modern slave easily affordable, but it also makes him or her a disposable commodity.
Gadfly: A slang term for an investor who attends the annual shareholders meeting to criticize the corporation’s executives. A gadfly addresses many issues for the shareholders, often grilling the management by asking difficult or embarrassing questions.
Named after small insects that bite and annoy livestock, the gadfly looks to irritate a corporation’s management until it acts on shareholder concerns. Questions regarding executive compensation or inconvenient annual meeting locations are often brought to light by a gadfly. A gadfly adds value for other shareholders by vocalizing their concerns and inciting action.
With one glass I’ve trapped a roach over the drain. While it thinks, I crawl on the floor searching for the rattle and bits of the other glass that I broke—their secret alignments, I know you have heard this: a secret. It feels like a secret I’ll carve out more deeply with this infant. To talk to you of the infant is to talk to you about God with the awe spinning or dropping from the mother of this house. You won’t forget me, when I lift this glass, and I won’t forget you.
It is also frequently argued that slavery gave southern planters a taste for extravagant, wasteful display, causing the notorious lack of thrift and the relative lack of economic development, compared to that experienced in the North and West. This is a doubtful inference, at best. Slavery did not make the Cavalier any more than slavery invented speculation in cotton.
Slavery did not make the Cavalier! Slavery does not make extravagance! Slavery does not reproduce itself quickly enough. Slavery does not make the Southern planter do anything he doesn’t already want to do—does slavery have that kind of Index?
—John of the Cross
Is the Index actually a woman who could love us? Is the Index actually an infant to sell? Think about it that way.
—John of the Cross
How does the Index love us? The Index loves us like we are its infant and its meal. The Index loves us like we are its labor and its fuck. The Index loves us like we are its information and its surface upon which to reflect an image of the Index. The Index loves us like we are its lipstick and its mother. The Index loves us like we are slaves with the ability to reproduce ourselves.
—John of the Cross
Eva Longoria Stock Index: A stock index comprised of companies related to the actress Eva Longoria. Some analysts believe that Eva Longoria has enough influence over consumers that her endorsements will materially affect product sales.
On the popular television show Desperate Housewives Longoria often promotes consumer goods. Outside of acting, she has endorsement deals with companies such as Hanes (NYSE: HBI), Bebe (NASDAQ: BEBE) and L’Oréal (NASDAQ: LRLCY). These companies are included in the Eva Longoria Stock Index, under the premise that her fans will increase the revenues of the promoted products.
Put all of your money in the Eva Longoria Stock Index. Put all of your money in the Ange
lina Jolie Stock Index. Put all of your money in the Lindsay Lohan Stock Index. Put all of your money in the Jennifer Lopez Stock Index. Put all of your money in the Paris Hilton Stock Index. Put it into the tender membranes of their Index, put it into their pink and lavender membranes, put it into their weapons-grade membranes that are holding our worlds together.
—John of the Cross
A single membrane separated me from the infant whose horizon was simple: a sheet of light. The surface that held our worlds together. Strong fat legs—he stands. But the other who left in the blood, left while you wrapped the leftover cake in the old cloth diaper that we use for a rag.
After being warned for four consecutive years that it was not doing enough to tackle slavery within its borders, Thailand now risks being downgraded to the lowest ranking on the US State Department’s human trafficking index, which evaluates 188 nations according to how well they combat and prevent human trafficking. A relegation to Tier 3 would put Thailand on a par with North Korea and Iran, and could lead to a downgrade in Thailand’s trading status with the US.