Here are the first two paragraphs of Toyota Motor Corporation’s press release announcing its financial results for the year ended March 31, 2009 (most Japanese companies end their fiscal years on March 31; bolds are mine):Tokyo - TOYOTA MOTOR CORPORATION (TMC) today announced operating results for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2009.
On a consolidated basis, net revenues for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2009 totaled 20.53 trillion yen, a decrease of 21.9 percent compared to the last fiscal year. Operating income decreased from 2.27 trillion yen to a loss of 461 billion yen, and income before income taxes, minority interest and equity in earnings of affiliated companies was a loss of 560.4 billion yen. Net income decreased from 1.72 trillion yen to a loss of 437 billion yen.
Across the board, the financial press reports I read translated the company’s reported losses expressed in yen into dollars ($4.4 billion in $US for the year, and $7.7 billion in the fourth quarter), but not its revenues (about $207 billion and $35 billion, respectively).
Why is that?
It may have something to do with the fact that Toyota, despite its considerable recent troubles, especially during most recent quarter, is leaving rivals Ford and General Motors in the rear-view mirror. That certainly distracts from the bailout blather about how GM’s and Chrysler’s crises were “unavoidable.”
Just two years ago, Toyota passed GM and became the world’s largest carmaker. In the most recent quarter, Toyota’s top line far exceeded Ford’s and GM’s ($24.8 billion and $22.4 billion, respectively).
BizzyBlog points out an error in reporting that used to be the bastion of government and snake-oil salesmen that is something the press is supposed to find and point out. Now the press is the one doing it.
If you're not a daily reader of BizzyBlog, you should be... if you want an example of the kind of work a firebrand press provides to a the republic. That's the press our Founding Fathers wanted to protect, but has been the left-hand of deceit from their inception.
"One of the amendments to the Constitution... expressly declares that 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press,' thereby guarding in the same sentence and under the same words, the freedom of religion, of speech, and of the press; insomuch that whatever violates either throws down the sanctuary which covers the others."- Thomas Jeffersons, 1798
"The press is impotent when it abandons itself to falsehood."-Thomas Jefferson, 1807
"An editor [should] set his face against the demoralizing practice of feeding the public mind habitually on slander and the depravity of taste which this nauseous aliment induces. Defamation is becoming a necessary of life, insomuch that a dish of tea in the morning or evening cannot be digested without this stimulant. Even those who do not believe these abominations, still read them with complaisance to their auditors, and instead of the abhorrence and indignation which should fill a virtuous mind, betray a secret pleasure in the possibility that some may believe them, though they do not themselves. It seems to escape them, that it is not he who prints, but he who pays for printing a slander, who is its real author."- Thomas Jefferson to John Norvell, 1807
Starving the mainstream press from revenue is the only way to end the deceit. Support only those presses who are seekers of truth.
Posts
