In December of 2016 billionaire President Elect of the United States Donald J. Trump named billionaire activist shareholder Carl Icahn as special adviser on regulatory policy.

Chapter I
Carl Icahn Pens a Love Letter to Donald Trump

In August of 2015 billionaire activist shareholder Carl Icahn penned a love letter to billionaire GOP Presidential nominee Donald Trump. Carl, being of a visionary constitution, harbored a great talent for fortune telling, and he was, of a consequence, able to divine that Donald J. Trump was the future!

“Dearest Donald,” Carl wrote, “I am very concerned about the middle class. Do you know that there is income inequality in this country? I didn’t either, but it’s true, and it’s gettin’ worse, and it’s a big problem. There’s gunna be a bloodbath if someone don’t do somethin’ about it.”

Carl proceed to explain in his love letter how the little guy was getting screwed. “It’s the politicians and the CEOs, Donnie. They’re takin’ advantage of the goddamn system! Nice, mediocre CEOs all over America are makin’ too much money because those bastards at the FED left interest rates too low for too long! They’re makin’ bubbles with these rates, Donnie! Goddamn bubbles!

“With these low interest rates, instead of investin’ in new machinery and equipment and shit, and making their workers more productive, what these companies do today is almost perverse!” Icahn explained, describing precisely the process by which he became a billionaire. “They just go buy other companies and inflate their stock prices on Wall Street to give themselves a payday! It’s financial engineering, Donnie! It ain’t free market!” It’s killin’ jobs!

“You’re the guy who can straighten this shit out, Donnie. You got balls!” Carl wrote in closing. “I love you Donnie. Yours, Carl.”

Chapter II
Financial Parasite Carl Icahn Does a Pump and Dump on Apple, Inc.

Two years prior to crafting this love missive to Donald J. Trump, billionaire activist shareholder Carl Icahn bought purchased for himself several shares of Apple stock. ‘Activist shareholder’, by the way, is a fancy word for “financial parasite”. By January of 2015 Carl owned  52,760,848 shares of Apple, Inc. That’s a lot of shares, by golly! That was 0.9% of all of the stock and it cost Carl $3.6 Billion!

With such vast stock Carl had amassed a great stake in Apple, Inc., and so he began issuing demands. Apple, you see, was flush with a few hundred billions of dollars. So on October 1, 2013 Carl explained his plan in a Tweet: “Had a cordial dinner with Tim [Cook] last night. We pushed hard for a 150 billion buyback. We decided to continue dialogue in about three weeks.” By “buyback”, Carl meant that he wanted Apple to spend its own money on buying back its own stock, which would inflate the value of the stock Carl had bought. Brilliant, yes? One is able to become rich by feeding off of the economy whilst offering zero value in return!

When Apple CEO Tim Cook explained that all of the money Apple had wasn’t exactly so liquid, Carl said, “No problem! You can just borrow the money! Interest rates are so low!” Tim said ‘Oh no, Carl, no! Why would a company flush with billions borrow money it doesn’t need to buy something that doesn’t produce anything?”

“Not this shit again!” Carl thought. Around this same time, you see, Michael Dell of Dell Computers fought hard to make Dell a private company just to stop financial parasite–pardon, ‘activist shareholder’–Carl Icahn from forcing Michael to borrow billions of dollars to buy back Dell shares in a hostile leveraged takeover! Corporate raiderism, if you will. This seems to be a thing Carl does!

Carl started to openly cajole Tim Cook on his “resource allocation strategy” through a series of Tweets! He schemed and he plotted and he planned! And he prevailed! Yay Carl!

By the second quarter of 2016 Apple bought back $116.6 Billion of its own stock and paid out $39.1 Billion in dividends to shareholders–shareholders like our dear Carl! Yes! Rather than invest all of that money in research and development, rather than invest it in new machinery and equipment and shit, rather than make its workers more productive, rather than create jobs by investing in the productive economy, Apple borrowed money to buy back its own stock! And in this way Carl was able to “pump” up the price of Apple’s stock while providing zero value to the company, zero value to the economy, and zero value to the world (that’s the financial parasite part!). Carl then “dumped” his stock (mumbling something about the Chinese). This is why it’s called a pump and dump! And Carl made a $2 Billion profit for himself. Yay for Carl!

Chapter III
Carl Becomes Special Advisor to Donald Trump

In December of 2016 billionaire President Elect of the United States Donald J. Trump named billionaire activist shareholder Carl Icahn as special adviser on regulatory policy. ‘Activist shareholder’ is a euphemism for financial parasite.

“Regulation is idiocy!” Carl had told Donald Trump, leading up to the appointment.

“Oh Carl!” Donald Trump replied, “I want you to be my Secretary of Treasury.”

“Fuck that shit!” Carl told Trump. “No official appointments! No questions from Senators for Chrissake! I don’t answer to no one, see?”

“How about ‘special advisor’ then?”

“What about Treasury?”

“I was thinking Dimon from JP Morgan.”

“Jamie Dimon? Fuck that guy! Put Mnuchin in.”

“Can you help me take care of China and Japan?”

“Yes! Donnie. Yes I can.”

“Are you willing to unload the stocks that might prove a yuge conflict of interest for the industries you’ll help me deregulate, Carl?”

“I absolutely will not!”

“You’re hired Carl. Let’s drain the swamp!”

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by Steve Heikkila