Comedian Lewis Black in an appearance on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart last night panned InBev’s takeover of Anheuser-Busch, saying it reflects the American economy ”being bought out by big waffle.”
You can watch the clip by clicking here.
Why would it be the GOVERNMENTS resposibility?!?!? We are a FREE MARKET society… we want to keep the gov’t out of these types of decisions. They can’t manage a budget ( and haven’t for decades) why in the world would you be looking to them for any type of “business” related support…
The purchase of AB by In-Bev was the result of a Family selling off their Stake in the company, the Company dissolving the barriers of protection (tiered board, etc…) that traditionally prevent these types of takeovers.
This is not the Gov’t.s domain they should not interfere… they will only muck up the waters even more…
It is the government’s responsibility to protect our currency and not de-value it like they have been doing for the last 8 years. They have created an environment ripe for the plucking by forign countrys.
larry couldn’t have said it better.
A stronger dollar would have prevented the sale of AB.
The cost of war, the tax cuts, the government spending…..
GWB is the worst president ever, poor excuse for a Republican.
I didn’t want to dive into that with all of the other shortcomings our Gov’t has piled up… That being said, ABSOLUTELY RIGHT!!! it’s easy to buy a company for 70 billion US when the Euro:USD rate is over 2…
Well said Larry
That’s because americans have become accustomed to sitting in their big old Wal-Mart waffle bottomed jeans WITH the fur all the time IMing and texting at der, pay it later no pay it now,learn nothing and breed more now…dey gots low, low, low,low,low,low…LOW
I have to agree that the “blame”, if any, belongs on the doorstep of the Busch family. Their lack of care in regards to protecting their company, along with their slow response to the need for international growth gave this take over a big push. The strong Euro versus the weak Dollar did indeed help things along, but it isn’t the only reason.
Funny, but I’m pretty sure true economists would agree that the dollar was beginning to weaken long before GWB took office. Do all the liberals have amnesia in regards to Clinton?
I’m not specifying any one regime… this has been a cross party collabrative effort spanning many, many years.
Why is anybody upset over this? The Busch family and AB’s stockholders made a killing on this deal! The IV hasn’t done anything to improve AB in years, and got rewarded by making a fortune on the takeover. They only fought the initial offer in order to get more out of the deal, not because they cared about owning the company. Miller got bought years ago by the South Africans, so did Coors after it merged with Molson of Canada.
I do think its funny that theres this blame Bush notion when it’s more than just him at fault. He gets a good share of it, but the budget comes from Congress. If Democrats cared, they’d do what IS in they’re power and cut spending massively. It would put even more focus on Republican spending and the Iraq War. But it’s impossible because no matter how much money Bush spends, Democrats actually want to spend more. They are independently thinking about a second stupid stimulus package after complaining how bad the idea was in the first place. Stop spending.
And Obamas gonna make it all better by increasing taxes by $1 trillion dollars and spending EVEN MORE. No stop spending and offer tax incentives for local economic development.
Douglas Wong is the National Editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Lewis Black is completely right about American being up for sale. Unless action is taken by our government Anheuser-Busch will be just one of the first sales in the yard sale of America.