The Untouchable: The Market Is Beyond the Fed's Reach - American Consequences"...In a
capitalist system, there are no sacred cows… What no longer meets the needs of shareholders, customers, or both
generally ceases to exist. In
centrally planned societies, that which employs us is generally a forever concept – hence the economic desperation.
Described more vividly, if readers are looking for
evidence of economic retreat, they need only find the countries in which the
lineup of top businesses remains the same year after year, decade after decade. It’s a
near-certain sign of decline because growing country economies are magnets for copious investments that relentlessly fund the replacement of existing commercial giants...
- Circuit City was the top-performing U.S. stock in the 1980s, by the 2020s it had vanished.
- Blockbuster’s story is much of the same. In the ’80s and ’90s, “Blockbuster Nights” were so common that the home-video-rental leader continued trying to expand the business model into the 2000s...
- General Electric (GE) was the most valuable company in the world, with a market cap of $585 billion.
- The company viewed as the next GE, and crowned as such on the cover of Barron’s, was Tyco.
- Enron was then seen as one of the best-managed companies in the world.
- The Internet increasingly factored into how we lived and worked, at which point Yahoo and AOL were the dominant players…
What has been written so far is hopefully a reminder that natural recessions and market corrections are signals of progress rather than scenarios we should fear.
They’re very often indicators that good is being replaced with great.
This is why we should shudder every time politicians promise to “bring back” jobs, or to fiddle with market forces that are delivering near-term pain – whereby ailing companies are allowed to fail...Read all.
