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posts relating to economics. For more economics posts see our Investing and Economics blog.
Recommended posts: Manufacturing Jobs Data: USA and China - Manufacturing Value Added Economic Data - Estate Tax Repeal - USA Health Care Costs reach 15.3% of GDP - Housing and the Economy - Science and Engineering Macroeconomic Investment
There are many significant problems with the medical care system in the USA. It makes sense that a system that costs over 50% more than other countries and has no better outcomes, from all that extra spending, suffers from many failures. Coverage for small business is one of the problems we face now – When Health Insurers Dump Small Companies:
Just from an insurance perspective the companies are not providing what is needed. They are quick to say you can’t have healthy people remain uncovered and wait to buy insurance once for example, “their house is on fire” (they are sick). They are right. Well you also can’t have the insurance company cancel coverage during the fire and have a system that works.
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Once again the USA was the leading country in manufacturing for 2008. And once again China grew their manufacturing output amazingly. In a change with recent trends Japan grew output significantly. Of course, the 2009 data is going to show the impact of a very severe worldwide recession.
Chart showing the percentage output of top manufacturing countries from 1990-2008 by Curious Cat Management Blog, Creative Commons Attribution.The first chart shows the USA’s share of the manufacturing output, of the countries that manufactured over $185 billion in 2008, at 28.1% in 1990, 27.7% in 1995, 32% in 2000, 28% in 2005, 28% in 2006, 26% in 2007 and 24% in 2008. China’s share has grown from 4% in 1990, 6% in 1995, 10% in 2000, 13% in 2005, 14% in 2006, 16% in 2007 to 18% in 2008. Japan’s share has fallen from 22% in 1990 to 14% in 2008. The USA has about 4.5% of the world population, China about 20%. See Curious Cat Investment blog post” Data on the Largest Manufacturing Countries in 2008.
Even with just this data, it is obvious the belief in a decades long steep decline in USA manufacturing is not in evidence. And, in fact the USA’s output has grown substantially over this period. It has just grown more slowly than that of China (as has every other country), and so while output in the USA has grown the percentage with China has shrunk. The percentage of manufacturing output by the USA (excluding output from China) was 29.3% in 1990 and 29.6% in 2008. The second chart shows manufacturing output over time.
Chart showing the output of the top manufacturing countries from 1990-2008 by Curious Cat Management Blog, Creative Commons Attribution.The 2008 China data is not provided for manufacturing alone (the latest UN Data, for global manufacturing, in billions of current USA dollars). The percentage of manufacturing (to manufacturing, mining and utilities) was 78% for 2005-2007 (I used 78% of the manufacturing, mining and utilities figure provided in the 2008 data). There is a good chance this overstates China manufacturing output in 2008 (due to very high commodity prices in 2008).
Hopefully these charts provide some evidence of what is really going on with global manufacturing and counteracts the hype, to some extent. Global economic data is not perfect. These figures are an attempt to capture the economic reality in the world but they are not a perfect proxy. This data is shown in 2008 USA dollars which is good in the sense that it shows all countries in the same light and we can compare the 1995 USA figure to 2005 without worrying about inflation. However foreign exchange fluctuations over time can show a country, for example, having a decline in manufacturing output in some year when in fact the output increased (just the decline against the USA dollar that year results in the data showing a decrease – which is accurate when measured in terms of USA dollars).
If the dollar declines substantially between when the 2008 data was calculated and the 2009 data is calculated that will give result in the data showing a substantial increase in those countries that had a currency strengthen against the USA dollar. At this time the Chinese Renminbi has not strengthened while most other currencies have – the Chinese government is retaining a peg to a specific exchange rate.
Korea (1.8% in 1990, 3% in 2008), Mexico (1.7% to 2.6%) and India (1.4% to 2.5%) were the only countries to increase their percentage of manufacturing output (other than China, of course, which grew from 3.9% to 18.5%).
Related: posts on manufacturing – Global Manufacturing Data 2007 – Global Manufacturing Employment Data – 1979 to 2007 – Top 10 Manufacturing Countries 2006 – Top 10 Manufacturing Countries 2005 – lean manufacturing resources
CEO Eric Schmidt Reveals ‘Centerpiece’ Of Google’s 2010 Strategy, speaking at the White House jobs summit.
And looking at the White House summit he said, “The basic message today is that with small business – which is the primary source of jobs – we need to figure out the loan problem. The banks aren’t really lending to them and anything that the government can do to accelerate that, needs to happen right now.”
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“Cloud computing is the centerpiece of our strategy. It’s a new model. You basically put all your information on servers and you have fast networks and lots of different kinds of personal computers and mobile phones that can use the applications… it’s a powerful model and it’s where the industry is going. It is the centerpiece of our 2010 strategy.”
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Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster today said in a note, that by 2016, 78% of Google’s revenue will still be from search. Schmidt agreed.
“My guess is that advertising and search ads will be the lion’s share of our business for quite a long time,” he said. “The reason is, it’s such a large part of our business and it continues to grow quite well.”
I continue to own Google and have it in my 12 stocks for 10 years portfolio.
Related: Google Exceeded Planned Spending on Personnel – Eric Schmidt on Management at Google – Meeting Like Google – Google Should Stay True to Their Management Practices
How ‘Buy American’ Can Hurt U.S. Firms
Halton Hills, a town of 50,000 people about 25 miles west of Toronto, is one of about a dozen Canadian communities forging ahead with plans to amend their procurement policies to freeze out American companies. “We won’t be taking any products from any country that is discriminating against us,” said Mayor Rick Bonnette.
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Aquarius gets a lot of its parts from abroad, particularly from Canada. Such integration became even tighter after the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994 joined the U.S., Canada and Mexico in a free flow of goods and services.
Trojan Technologies Inc. of Ontario, North America’s dominant maker of ultraviolet disinfection equipment for treating sewage, is a key supplier to Aquarius and other companies. Because of the Buy American provisions, Trojan has had to shift production to a plant in Valencia, Calif., a move that has resulted in delays and additional costs being passed on to customers, said Trojan executive Christian Williamson.
The challenges of trying to legislate market choices such as what products to buy are difficult. It is understandable to want to direct stimulus funds to improving the economy today in the USA. Creating legislation that can cope with interactions and unintended consequences inherent in such attempts is not easy.
Related: China and the Sugar Industry Tax Consumers – New Look American Manufacturing – Russell Ackoff Webcast on Systems Thinking – Why Congress Won’t Investigate Wall Street
Chart showing loan default rates for real estate, consumer and agricultural loans for 1998 to 2009 by the Curious Cat Investing Economics Blog, Creative Commons Attribution, data from the Federal Reserve.Default rates on commercial (up another 151 basis points) and residential (93 basis points) real estate continued to increase dramatically in the second quarter. Credit card default rates increased but only by 20 basis points.
Real estate default rates exploded in 2008, in the aftermath of the financial market meltdown. In the 4th quarter of 2007 residential default rates were 3.02% by the 4th quarter of 2008 they were 6.34% and in the 2nd quarter of this year they were 8.84% (582 basis points above the 4th quarter of 2007). Commercial real estate default rates were at 2.74% in the 4th quarter of 2007, 5.43% in the fourth quarter of 2008 and 7.91% in the 2nd quarter of 2009 (a 517 basis point increase).
Credit card default rates were much higher than real estate default rates for the last 10 years (the 4-5% range while real estate hovered above or below 2%). Now they are over 200 and 300 basis points bellow residential and commercial default rates respectively. From 4.8% in the 3rd quarter 2008 to 5.66% in the 4th and 6.5% in the 1st quarter of 2009.
Small steps to reduce the large consumer debt have been made recently: consumer debt declined a record $21.5 billion in July. Since April of 2008 consumer debt has been reduced by $70 billion in the USA. Unfortunately we still have $2.47 trillion or
$8,233 for every person (using 300 million as the total population).
Data from the Federal Reserve
The W. Edwards Deming Institute has posted Dr. Deming’s 1984 video on the 5 deadly diseases of western management.
Dr. Deming added 2 diseases to reach his famous 7 deadly diseases: excessive medical care costs and excessive legal damage awards swelled by lawyers working on contingency fees.
Personally I believe all 7 of those diseases are still prevalent and causing damage. I do think some progress has been made on longer term thinking but far too many organizations still are extremely short term focused. And I would add two new deadly diseases of management: excessive executive compensation and an outdated intellectual property system.
Related: Deming Companies – Purpose of an Organization – Continual Improvement – Creating Jobs – New Management Truths Sometimes Started as Heresies
The system is responsible for 90, 92, 94, 97% of problems – W. Edwards Deming. Fix the system, don’t blame the people. When you seek system fixes you approach situations differently than if you search for people to blame.
By the way, I am often asked about the data supporting Deming’s contention that the system was responsible for 97% of the problems. This statement was not based on a set of data but on Dr. Deming’s decades of experience. And he increased the percentage over time – as he learned more.
Roads that are designed to kill
One of the ways they began to protect people was to put barriers down the center of two-lane roads. They showed that this could be done cheaply. When Mylar – a strong polyester film – is supported by closely spaced plastic poles, it can keep cars from crossing the median. When the Swedes used this type of center barrier to separate the traffic going in opposite directions, they effectively prevented head-on collisions and the death rate on these roads fell by 70 percent to 80 percent.
Global health research shows more improvements can save lives. For example, Ghana put in rumble strips – small bumps spaced closely together – across all the roads leading into the capital city of Accra, reducing fatalities by 35 percent. Research has shown that speed bumps on roads are one of the “best buys” in all of global health.
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Most people think we are doing all that can be done to keep our roads safe. They are wrong. Road traffic injuries kill more than a million people a year worldwide, including 40,000 a year in the United States.
Is a situation killing 40,000 people in the USA a year a health care issue? It sure seems to me it would be. It probably isn’t a disease management issue though (some might try to say bad roads are a disease but I wouldn’t say that). I think this is one, of many examples, that shows that we have a disease and injury management system not a health care system (in addition to illustrating systems thinking, effective root cause analysis, PDSA, innovation, respect for people…).
Related: Find the Root Cause Instead of the Person to Blame – Traffic Congestion and a Non-Solution – Checklists Save Lives – Saving Lives: US Health Care Improvement – The Economic Benefits of Walkable Communities – SWAT Raid Signs of Systemic Failures – System Improvement to Respond to the Dynamics of Crowd Disasters – The Leading Causes of Death
Where are the Shareholders’ Mansions? CEOs’ Home Purchases, Stock Sales, and Subsequent Company Performance by Crocker H. Liu, Arizona State University and David Yermack, New York University – Stern School of Business
That we put in power CEO’s that see themselves as nobility with the right to build castles (and many of these CEO castles dwarf all but the most conspicuous castle built by nobility) by taking the wealth produced by others from corporate coffers is a sign of our failure to select acceptable leaders for companies.
Related: Another Year of CEO’s Taking Hugely Excessive Pay – Excessive Executive Pay – Exposing CEO Pay Excesses – Narcissistic Cadre of Senior Executives – 9 Deadly Diseases
When Economic Incentives Backfire by Samuel Bowles, Sante Fe Institute
Punished by Rewards, by Alfie Kohn, is a great book on this topic. The area of “motivating” employees is one it is often hard for managers to learn. Even managers that have been studying Deming, Ackoff, Ohno… for years still have trouble with the idea that trying to find the right incentive scheme to motivate the right behavior is the wrong approach. Read the The Human Side Of Enterprise by Douglas Mcgregor (in 1960) to re-enforce the understanding of human motivation provided by Toyota’s respect for people principles.
Managers need to eliminate de-motivation in the work systems not try and find bonus schemes to motivate behavior. Eliminating de-motivation is often much more work. You can’t just get some money from the bonus pool and start giving it away. You have to manage. But if you are a manager you shouldn’t be afraid to actually manage the system and make it better.
Related: “Pay for Performance” is a Bad Idea – Reward and Incentive Programs are Ineffective — Even Harmful by Peter Scholtes – The Defect Black Market – What’s the Value of a Big Bonus? – Problems with Bonuses – Losses Covered Up to Protect Bonuses – Stop Demotivating Employees
In yet another voice against the looting mentality of the current crop of executives Chris Bones, dean of Henley Business School writes a A crisis of confidence?
It really is a shame that the executives leading so many companies are so moral, ethically and managerially bankrupt. We need to stop allowing such people to become executives in organizations. With such fundamental problems in their basic understanding of human systems the correct solution is to stop allowing such flawed people to have power not to try and convince such flawed people to behave responsibly.
That executives believe they should act as royalty taking what they wish from the value produced by others is so fundamental a failure that I do not believe reform is the best solution. They should just be removed. If you are lucky some competitor will hire them and you can gain not only from their removal but from the damage they cause your competitor.
Related: Warren Buffett on Excessive CEO Pay – Honda Executives not Overpaid – Unconscionable Executive Pay – Tilting at Ludicrous CEO Pay 2008 – Looting: Bankruptcy for Profit – More on Obscene CEO Pay
Obviously many businesses are now dependent on computer Network Operations Centers (NOC). Some of these data centers can cause millions of dollars in lost sales each minute if they fail. So sound engineering, including off-site redundancy is critical. Authorize.net is a recent example of such a failure, Authorize.net Goes Down, E-Commerce Vendors Left Hanging
From what I can piece together it seems within about 5 hours services were back up, at least partially. NOC failures are not uncommon (either due to fire, power failure [including backup systems], government raids, software glitches [not exactly the same as a NOC failure but some can have the affect of essentially knocking off a NOC from providing the specific service desired]). Evaluating these risks must be part of management systems with significant NOC dependencies.
Authorize.net set up a Twitter account and within hours has 2,500 followers. I am not a huge fan of Twitter, it is nice but seems pretty limited to me. But this is an example of using it effectively. You can follow me on Twitter @curiouscat_com.
Related: Information Technology and Business Process Support – Amazon S3 Failure Analysis – Information Technology and Management – IT Operations as a Competitive Advantage – Undersea Cables Cut Again, Reducing India’s Capacity by 65%
The Cost Conundrum by Atul Gawande, New Yorker (The Power of a Checklist was published there in 2007 by the same author)
“I’ll be there,” the cardiologist said. Fifteen minutes later, he was. They mulled over everything together. The cardiologist adjusted a medication, and said that no further testing was needed. He cleared the patient for surgery, and the operating room gave her a slot the next day.
The whole interaction was astonishing to me. Just having the cardiologist pop down to see the patient with the surgeon would be unimaginable at my hospital. The time required wouldn’t pay. The time required just to organize the system wouldn’t pay.
The core tenet of the Mayo Clinic is “The needs of the patient come first”—not the convenience of the doctors, not their revenues. The doctors and nurses, and even the janitors, sat in meetings almost weekly, working on ideas to make the service and the care better, not to get more money out of patients. I asked Cortese how the Mayo Clinic made this possible.
“It’s not easy,” he said. But decades ago Mayo recognized that the first thing it needed to do was eliminate the financial barriers. It pooled all the money the doctors and the hospital system received and began paying everyone a salary, so that the doctors’ goal in patient care couldn’t be increasing their income. Mayo promoted leaders who focussed first on what was best for patients, and then on how to make this financially possible.
No one there actually intends to do fewer expensive scans and procedures than is done elsewhere in the country. The aim is to raise quality and to help doctors and other staff members work as a team. But, almost by happenstance, the result has been lower costs. [actually the Deming Chain Reaction] (more…)
Decades ago Dr. Deming emphasized the deadly disease of excessive health care costs in the USA. Since then, year after year, the situation has become worse (reaching $2.2 trillion in spending in 2007 – 16.2% of GDP). During that time senior executives has put forth very little serious effort (in comparison to the huge cost) to fix this problem. Finally, in the last few years, more and more senior executives are actively moving to address the ever worsening crisis (including, Howard Schultz, CEO at Starbucks).
They seem to be realizing that hoping the problem will just fix itself is not a great strategy. Finally senior executives are realizing they need to have the government address the systemic failures. Those executives need to keep up their efforts because those seeking to retain the system that doesn’t work, because they personally benefit from it, have been doing a great job of preventing progress for decades. Until a critical mass of senior executives demand change from Washington the chance of improving the relative performance of the USA health system in comparison to other countries is very bleak (we have just been getting more expensive and less effective [relative to other countries] over time).
CEOs Secretly Want Health-Care Reform
Related: Many Experts Say Health-Care System Inefficient, Wasteful – Articles on Improving the Healthcare system – Applying Disruptive Thinking to the Healthcare Crisis – Our Failed Health-care System
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Secret of Googlenomics: Data-Fueled Recipe Brews Profitability
Google continues to make bold moves putting faith in their ability to find innovative solutions that others reject as impossible. It is a challenging but interesting path to success, for them, at least.
Related: Google Should Stay True to Their Management Practices – Google’s Answer to Filling Jobs Is an Algorithm – The Google Way: Give Engineers Room – Google Website Optimizer – Google: Experiment Quickly and Often – posts on innovation in management
Toyota Posts Loss of $6.9 Billion in Last Quarter
For the year to next March, the maker of the Prius hybrid forecast an operating loss of 850 billion yen, more than double the average forecast in a survey of 20 analysts by Thomson Reuters. It sees an annual net loss of 550 billion yen based on the dollar and euro averaging 95 yen and 125 yen.
The bleak forecasts prompted ratings agency Standard & Poor’s to downgrade Toyota’s long-term debt ratings to AA from AA+, with a negative outlook.
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To return to profit, Toyota must sell more cars or cut costs further, Watanabe said. But he predicted the U.S. market would be around 10 million vehicles industrywide at best this year, down from more than 13 million in 2008.
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Toyota is bleeding overhead costs, with about a third of its global assembly lines working on single shifts. It will slash capital spending by more than a third this year to 830 billion yen as it puts expansion projects on hold, but it said it was not thinking of closing any production lines for good.
In my opinion these negative results are a sign of Toyota’s strength not weakness. The credit crisis and economic downturn has resulted in a poor economic environment. Toyota has managed to sustain the blow and hold firm to their principles and likely will come out of this downturn stronger as a company (mainly re-enforcing the importance of planning for bad economic conditions and not getting too excited about growth potential versus risks of growing too fast) and in a better position compared to their competitors. I continue to be an owner of Toyota stock and happily so.
Related: Idle Workers Busy at Toyota – Financial Market Meltdown (Oct 2008) – “2007 has been a difficult year for Toyota” – New Toyota CEO’s Views (2005) – Jim Press, Toyota N. American President, Moves to Chrysler
Why Congress Won’t Investigate Wall Street
“We may now need to be reminded what Wall Street was like before Uncle Sam stationed a policeman at its corner,” Pecora wrote in 1939, “lest, in time to come, some attempt be made to abolish that post.” Well, the time did come. The attempt was made. And we could use that reminder today.
Well said. The incredibly dire current economic results should encourage some thought about choices we have made. The failures of the political leaders (putting their donors interests above the public interest) is something that should be investigated seriously. The economy declined 6.3% in the fourth quarter of last year and 6.1% in the first quarter of 2009. And we have paid several hundred billion to bail out bankers; the same bankers that had congress repeal the regulation that prevented such enormous failures in the past.
It would be nice if we at least learned our lesson, but I don’t think we are remotely close to learning our lesson. There seems to be some tilt away from the most egregious excesses of the last 25 years of financial deregulation. But only minor adjustments around the edges seem to be under consideration at this time.
Related: Failing to Understand the Capitalist Economic Model – Looting: Bankruptcy for Profit – Leverage, Complex Deals and Mania – Lobbyists Keep Tax Break for Billion Dollar Private Equities Deals (2007) – Congress Eases Bank Laws (1999) – Why Pay Taxes or be Honest – Failure to Regulate Financial Markets Leads to Predictable Consequences – Losses Covered Up to Protect Bonuses – Bankers Bet Billions and Lose (guess who pays? Not them) – Uncertain Economic Times
I continue to do my part to publicize the abusive CEO pay packages that the current crop of unethical CEO’s, and those sitting on corporate boards have supported (Tilting at Ludicrous CEO Pay 2008 – 2007 post on CEO pay abuses). It does seem there is more anger now at the looting these corrupt CEOs have engaged in; though far too many people seem to think the corruption is some isolated few CEO’s. The widespread failure of ethical standards by an enormous number CEO’s (those taking from corporate treasuries as though it was their own personal bank account) is the problem (not a few individuals). The looters certainly have littered their “courts” with apologists for their egregious behavior. Even with the large amounts they pay such lackeys I am surprised they find such willing apologists, in such large numbers.
| 2007 pay rank |
Company | CEO | 2008 Pay | 2007 Pay | CEO % of 2008 Earnings | total employees |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Motorola | Sanjay Jha | $104,400,000 | company lost $4.2 billion | 64,000 | |
| 2 | Oracle | Lawrence Ellison | $84,600,000 | $61,200,000 | 1.5% | 86,600 |
| 3 | Walt Disney | Robert Iger | $51,100,000 | $27,700,000 | 1.2% | 150,000 |
| 4 | American Express | Kenneth Chenault | $42,800,000 | $50,100,000 | 1.6% | 66,000 |
| 5 | Citigroup | Vikram Pandit | $38,200,000 | company lost $27.7 billion | 322,800 | |
| 6 | Hewlett-Packard | Mark Hurd | $34,000,000 | $26,000,000 | 7.4% | 6,200 |
| 7 | Calpine | Jack A. Fusco | $32,700,000 | 327% | 2,000 |
This executive pay data is for 2008, from the New York Times article, Pay at the Top. Earnings and employee data for 2008 from Google Finance. I would not pay any of these guys 1% of what they were paid if I owned the company, myself.
These guys and their friends have created a culture where their looting is as accepted as the clothes the emperor is not wearing. We need to wake up and stop letting these people steal the bounty created by the employees, customers, community, suppliers, investors… They want a world where they can behave like nobility – taking whatever they want from the value created by others. And lately they have succeeded in creating such a world. They leave in their wake very weakened companies and societies.
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Health spending in the United States grew 6.1 percent in 2007, to $2.2 trillion or $7,421 per person.
For comparison the total GDP per person in China is $6,100. This continues the trend of health care spending taking an every increasing portion of the economic output (the economy grew by 4.8 percent in 2007). This brings health care spending to 16.2% of GDP (which is yet another, in a string of record high percentages of GDP spent on health care). In 2003 the total health care spending was 15.3 of GDP.
With the exception of prescription drugs (which grew at 1.4% in 2007, compared to the 3.5% in 2006), spending for most other health care services grew at about the same rate or faster than in 2006. Hospital spending, which accounts for about 30 percent of total health care spending, grew 7.3 percent in 2007, compared to 6.9 percent in 2006.
Spending growth for both nursing home and home health services accelerated in 2007 (4.8% v. 4.0%). Spending growth for freestanding home health care services increased to 11.3 percent. Total health care spending by public programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid, grew 6.4% in 2007 v. 8.2% in 2006. In comparison, health care spending by private sources grew 5.8% compared to 5.4%.
Private health insurance premiums grew 6.0 percent in 2007, the same rate as in 2006. Out-of-pocket spending grew 5.3 percent in 2007, an acceleration from 3.3 percent growth in 2006. Out-of-pocket spending accounted for 12.0 percent of national health spending in 2007. This share has been steadily declining both recently and over the long-run; in 1998, it accounted for 14.7 percent of health spending and, in 1968, out-of-pocket spending accounted for 34.8 percent of all health spending.
The costs for health services and supplies for 2007 were distributed among businesses (25%), households (31%), other private sponsors (4%), and governments (40%).
Decades ago Dr. Deming included excessive health care costs as one of the seven deadly diseases of western management. We have only seen the problem get worse. Finally it seems that a significant number of people are in agreement that the system is broken. Still, admitting the system is broken is not the same as agreeing on how to fix it. The way forward to workable solutions still seems very difficult.
Full press release from the United States Department of Health and Human Services.
Related: Many Experts Say Health-Care System Inefficient, Wasteful – International Health Care System Performance – USA Paying More for Health Care – Health Insurance Premiums Soar Again – PBS Documentary on Improving Hospitals
Minnesota Bank Asks Why It Pays for Wall Street Greed
I am not very surprised that politicians provide big favors to those that give them huge amounts of money (former investment banks, farming interests, private plane owners, Fortune 100 companies, owners of oceanfront mansions, private equity speculators…). I am a bit surprised how much money is being lavished on those huge donors now, with the bailouts. Especially with how lacking in even minor consequences those huge gifts to their donors are (normally if the payoffs to supports get too huge there are at least some cover provided by putting in consequences for this “need” to send taxpayer money to their contributors).
The FDIC is a great government program. But allowing huge banks to take enormous risks and then passing on the much of the costs, of a small portion of those risks (FDIC insured deposit accounts), to banks that do not act as irresponsibly as the risk takers is a bad idea. Insurance should have increasing costs based on increasingly risky behavior.
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Warren Buffett published his letter to shareholders yesterday. As usual, it is of great interest to anyone interested in the economic, investing and management ideas.
Our record matches our rhetoric. Most buyers competing against us, however, follow a different path. For them, acquisitions are “merchandise.” Before the ink dries on their purchase contracts, these operators are contemplating “exit strategies.” We have a decided advantage, therefore, when we encounter sellers who truly care about the future of their businesses.
Some years back our competitors were known as “leveraged-buyout operators.” But LBO became a
bad name. So in Orwellian fashion, the buyout firms decided to change their moniker. What they did not change, though, were the essential ingredients of their previous operations, including their cherished fee structures and love of leverage. Their new label became “private equity,”
Berkshire Hathaway is a very well run company. Warren Buffett is a great investor. He is also a great executive. He hires honest and able people and lets them do their job. He ensures managers retain constancy of purpose by focusing on the long term and not getting overly focused on quarterly results. And have you ever read an annual report that talks of so many employees with such respect (granted it is a rare situation – something similar in an annual report could well seem disingenuous if it were not Warren Buffett writing)?
Related: 2005 Annual Report from Buffett – Warren Buffett’s 2006 Shareholder Letter – Warren Buffett Webcast on the Credit Crisis – Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting 2008
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