Carlos Slim and more of America’s Political Corruption
This is rife with waste and
abuse. A Mexican telecom mogul who held
the title of world's richest man, and one of former president Obama's top
donors got even richer from the U.S. government program that supplied so-called
"Obamaphones" to America’s poor.
It really does not matter to me
that a Mexican won the contract to supply America’s ne’er do well’s with Obama
phones; what really frosts my pickle is that the money Carlos earned (at a rate
of about $10.00 per Obama phone) left our country and did not find its way back
into the United States as an investment or a reinvestment into our
economy. Instead, all that money went
into Mexico’s wealth infrastructure.
Carlos Slim Helú is a Mexican
business magnate, investor and philanthropist.
From 2010 to 2013, Slim was ranked as the richest person in the world by
the Forbes business magazine. He derived
his fortune from his extensive holdings in a considerable number of Mexican
companies through his conglomerate, Grupo Carso and through alleged ties with
Mexico’s Drug Cartel and El Chapo, and that even Mexico’s presidents are
reluctant to talk about those ties[1]. As of February 2020, he is the fifth-richest
person in the world according to Forbes' listing of The World's Billionaires,
with he and his family having a net worth estimated at about $68.9
billion. He certainly is the richest
person in Latin America.
Slim serves as the chairman and
CEO of telecommunications firms Telmex and America Movil (AMX), with a market
capitalization of over $80 Billion. Slim
also has investments in various South American firms in Brazil, Peru, and
Colombia, including a controlling interest in Banco Inbursa[2].
Today, Slim’s fortune is said to
be about $80 billion dollars which rivals the fortune of Bill Gates.[3].
His conglomerate includes
education, health care, industrial manufacturing, transportation, real estate,
media, energy, hospitality (I wonder what this is a front for), entertainment,
high-technology, retail, sports and financial services. He accounts for 40% of the listings on the
Mexican Stock Exchange, while his net worth is equivalent to about 6 percent of
Mexico's gross domestic product. As of
2016, he is the largest single shareholder of The New York Times Company[4].
Carlos Slim owns a controlling
stake in TracFone, which makes $10 per phone for each device it provides to
poor Americans. The company, whose
president and CEO is Frederick “F.J.” Pollak, also makes money from extra
minutes and data plans it sells to subscribers who get phones and service
through the government's Lifeline program. The program, which began in the mid-1980s, exploded
during the onset of Obama’s Obamaphone program, to supply cellular phones to America’s
poor.
Slim owns TracFone and Simple
Mobile. TracFone and Simple Mobile service are huge players in the Lifeline
program through the company's “SafeLink Wireless” brand. TracFone had 3.8
million subscribers through the federal program as of late 2011.
Comments
Post a Comment