Coming February 6, 2024 . . .
MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop
Coming February 6, 2024 . . . MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
Corporate giants once had all-powerful chiefs with domains to match. But activist investors and
technological change are remaking the executive suite.
Comments
I posted this with an excerpt yesterday further down the news queue, I suspect your posting the same link might have kicked my posting off the front page menu, but it is still on the "In The News" page if people want to see the excerpt, it's here.
But I am real happy to see you post it again! It makes me feel I am not alone here in finding this kind of story important.to read! I probably look at business news about the wealthy class a lot more than many here because I have to keep up with what is going on with the art market. In doing so, it often hits me when I see some arguments here that others are arguing like it's still the 1980's, like the whole economic and corporate world has not changed since then, like they've been under a rock for three decades.
It is one thing to have a leftist dream, it's quite another to argue from a point as if nothing has changed since the old days. Especially since in this time of radical change (I think in the history books it will probably be treated no different than the Industrial Revolution; add in the catalyst of crazy Trump also wanting to go back to the olden days but doing it ineptly) people who are really on top of the reality of things have a chance to form the future.
To me, it matters not what your opinion of what to do about this or that situation, because I am here to just share getting an accurate vision of wassup. So when I see people arguing passionately over supposed situations that are no longer accurate, that is what drives me nuts and gets me challenging, I want to say: doncha see, what you are all het up about is just not how things are now.
by artappraiser on Sun, 06/18/2017 - 1:43pm
Your link is right there - if I had just looked! My apologies ... but, yeah, it's nice to know that great minds think alike.
One of the things that caught my attention was this:
Not to mention that "activist investors" and hedge funds have accrued more power than traditional CEOs and boardrooms ...
My take on the article in general is that, as you pointed out, things are changing rapidly enough for those that want to see wealth inequality diminish to be left behind rather than effective unless they realize who the "enemy" is - and their ambitions. It's not the old white Republican behind the desk in the corner office barking orders who matters anymore*, it's the young up-and-comers who have learned how to manage money and power succinctly and far more efficiently - they're firing the bosses they've left behind. And it's working. The fact is that "the man" doesn't exist anymore, and neither does the "corporate giant" of old.
*That's Trump's problem in a nutshell.
by barefooted on Sun, 06/18/2017 - 2:16pm
I think the people trading new kinds of financial paper rather than selling pieces of companies "making" or "building" something (even intellectual property is making something) are the new problem. They were the problem of 2009. And that problem is not just the ultra wealthy, as these things eventually get packaged so every Tom Dick and Harry in China or wherever can buy a piece of an American's or Spaniard's mortgage or whatever the new paper thing is. The investor class is worldwide and of many classes. If you have an IRA, you are part of the investor class.
It's not going away soon. The principle behind it is the zeitgeist, with things like Bitcoin and crowd sourcing, etc.
A totally new kind of regulation is needed? Part of the problem is that people with the most smarts are always where the money can be made, don't want to work for the salary of a bureaucrat. The bureaucrats are always outfoxed.
by artappraiser on Sun, 06/18/2017 - 2:42pm
In some cases perhaps new regulation might be needed. In others regulation that exists is sufficient. While courts decide they don't do it in a vacuum. Governments can weigh in and affect court decisions. For example (I've read I'm not a lawyer) there are sufficient laws that require clear proof of ownership of a mortgage before a house can be foreclosed. With these investment class mortgage papers the chain of ownership is so convoluted with mortgages bundled together and sold, unbundled or combined and rebundled so many times that there is no clear owner. The standards were leniently interpreted to the advantage of the paper owners to the detriment of the individual home owners. If federal attorneys had gotten involved and won a few cases against the bundlers that could be used as precedent in other cases this whole bundled mortgage scam could have been shut down. Sometimes it's less a matter of regulation than a matter of political choice. The prosecution is an agent of the state.
by ocean-kat on Sun, 06/18/2017 - 4:38pm
Except those that can sell these startups and new models are making the market more liquid. The problem, as 1 prominent VC noted, is that these startups aren't public, have little chance of becoming so, so little chance of investors exiting in a normal fashion. It's like a bottle with a cork in it waiting to pop messily, rather than a stream with multiple stages/junction points. Everyone wants arbitrage, to corner unicorn companies in pre-IPO, but then there's no open market or info to evaluate the unicorn and so no investor wants sloppy seconds on a cashed-out deal. And with companies "building market share", not real revenues, there's no good measure of profit like EBITDA - it just becomes fantasy football with funny money.
by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 06/18/2017 - 7:30pm
PS - the "custodial CEO" has been growing for some time - the founding CEO is considered too risky, so the investors bring in their professional CEO. Feels like how the Hollywood studios destroyed the ability to make good serious films, instead creating a closed feedback system and ignoring the value a founder brings to his own company. Vision is dead?
by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 06/18/2017 - 7:34pm
p.s. The fact is that "the man" doesn't exist anymore, and neither does the "corporate giant" of old.
Thank you for that!!! Should be a month-long headline here, mho.
by artappraiser on Sun, 06/18/2017 - 2:44pm
I was struck by this article too, but I'm skeptical of the historic implications.
First, the evidence Schwartz provides for his sweeping conclusion is mainly anecdotal with a heavy reliance on one company, G.E. He acknowledges "pockets of unbridled ambition and occasional excess" but asserts without evidence that "most of the Fortune 500" CEOs have lost their perks. But did most CEOs ever have such perks, and to what extent have they lost them? It's my sense that the whole idea of the "baronial" CEO derives from a few celebrity executives like Jack Welch who ran the biggest, richest corporations in the country. Many of those companies, like G.E., have fallen from grace, so naturally, their CEOs are less prominent. These days, we're more enamored of tech titans like Jeff Bezos, and that is precisely where those "pockets" of ambition and excess continue to flourish.
Second, even if Schwartz is correct about the trend, I see a cyclical swing, not an epochal revolution. Powerful CEOs come and go, first emerging in the Gilded Age before declining somewhat amid the Depression and WWII. The modern baronial CEO trend dates to the 1980s, while the rubber-stamp, country-club boards gained attention in the oughts. So what Schwartz documents may be little more than a temporary correction.
by Michael Wolraich on Mon, 06/19/2017 - 12:00pm
Of course could be cyclical, but at my age, don't care about the next cycle decades down the road.... On the other hand, Jeff Bezos or his heirs could be king of the world in a decade: food, you want food? I got your food right here.
by artappraiser on Mon, 06/19/2017 - 1:54pm