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Bernie Ebbers Resigns
from the not-that-surprising dept
It's been a very long time since I've heard anyone with anything good to say about Worldcom and their CEO, Bernie Ebbers. So, I guess it's not that big of a surprise to find out that Ebbers has resigned this morning. There's no word on what's going to happen with all the money they loaned him. Even with all that I'm scared (really scared) to find out what sort of ridiculous severance package he'll end up with. Update: This article has more details. The TV news is saying that Worldcom may file for bankruptcy as well.
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ya really gotta wonder
I was part of a company which was almost absorbed by Worldcom. We were owned by a company owned by MCI -- when Worldcom bought MCI, MCI sold our parent to EDS, while my unit was sold by our parent to yet another company! (This all happened pretty much simultaneously) Now Worldcom is collapsing, EDS has pretty much shut down the former parent of my unit, and my unit is being closed down by it's current owner (no problems for me, I've been gone myself for a year).
You really have to wonder about the long term wisdom in pushing companies to grow, grow, grow, which is what the short-term needs of the stock market force companies to do. You see this all over the place -- Enron, AOL/Time Warner, you name it. These short-term paper deals which pump the stock for a short period only end up costing the average person in jobs and long-term stock market holdings.
Why is slow-but-steady growth so bad? Why does it have to be 50% year over year?
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Re: ya really gotta wonder
>> Why is slow-but-steady growth so bad? Why does it have to be 50% year over year?
Because rapid short-term growth concentrates the wealth to the insiders, who of course are the ones that are driving for this in the first place. It's an inherent conflict of interest.
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BW article
If you haven't seen the article on Ebbers in the latest BW, it is a frightening (or funny) read: Bernie called his senior exec team together for a recent strategy session only to spend the entire time discussing how to save money by not watering office plants, cutting down on office coffee theft, etc. It was the kind of story for which there is no comeback; I guessed 3 weeks left for him when I read it.
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