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1.  

   ya really gotta wonder

   

   xdroop, Apr 30th, 2002 @ 6:10am

   
   

   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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2.  

   Re: ya really gotta wonder

   

   2Lazy2Register, Apr 30th, 2002 @ 6:26am

   
   

   >> 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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3.  

   BW article

   

   todd, Apr 30th, 2002 @ 12:21pm

   
   

   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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