do you really, really think that LMT spent $40B last year? On what?
Engines? Computers? Materials?
You know Lockheed Martin make planes, missiles etc?
I know that's what they claim they make. They supposedly built enough weapons to prepare to fight WWIII -- but it turns out the US is barely equipped to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. Imagine if the US had to fight a war against a real enemy. You know, one with an army. I'm quite confident that little red button at the White House is connected to nothing. Remember how when after the Soviet Union "fell" internal documents revealed that much of the Soviet weaponry was fake? They would pretend to transport missles around that weren't real just so the US would THINK they were better armed than they really were. Well, guess whaaaaaaat? You think both sides weren't bluffing?
Remember Rumsfeld's "light armor, light war" idea? Hmmmm.... What could possibly have been the motivation behind THAT?
Lockheed Martin also claims to do much of the work for NASA. You know that little space agency that has accomplished so muuuuuuuch over the past 40 years? Exactly what have they been spending all those billions every year on? Most people who work at "nasa" aren't employed by the government, they are employed by contractors like LMT. Why is this? Could it be so that the money gets transferred directly into the hands of Wall Str... I mean the private sector?
BTW, Raytheon claimed to spend $20B last year. What if we added up all the money spent by all the aerospace/defense companies (interesting how aerospace/defense are a joint category of stocks!) every single year for the past 30 years, do you think it would add up to a very big number? Do you think all that spending has manifested itself in actual output by the military and space exploration programs over that time period -- or do you think rather--just perhaps-- all that money has something more to do with why employees at Goldman Sachs get paid so much and why the cost of real estate in Manhattan is so damn high?