Under the Sweeps, the Companies’ net worth is taken every quarter. Shareholders are completely barred from receiving any money from the
Companies in the form of dividends, or from realizing the gains that would result if the Companies could reinvest their earnings, or from an- ything else that could provide economic value to shareholders. The Sweeps do nothing to decrease the Government’s liquidation prefer- ences in the Companies, which stand at $189.5 billion. Nor do they af- fect the Government’s warrants to purchase up to 79.9% of each Com- pany’s common stock. The upshot is that the Sweeps destroy the com- mon shares’ entire economic value, now and until they are stopped.
The Sweeps’ scale is vast. The Government has already stripped the Companies of hundreds of billions of dollars, which is more than the amount saved through “sequestration,” and more than the annual GDPs of 140 countries. To date, the Government’s dividends amount to over $40 billion more than the Government invested in the Companies.