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U.S. airlines (Delta, United Continental, American) capacity restraint 2010-2014 and U.S. Justice Department investigation for collusion
09/14/2011
Linked Articles
Justice Department Probes Airlines for Collusion
Wall Street Journal 07/02/2015
Carriers Keep Capacity in CheckWall Street Journal 09/14/2011
EADS Airbus and manufacturing of the Airbus 320 and Neo at a new plant in Alabama
07/21/2011
Manufacturing in the U.S. will reduce the impact of currency fluctuations as planes are priced in U.S. dollars. It also improves the public perception of Airbus in the U.S. in its effort to secure orders from airlines in the U.S.
Linked Articles
Airbus's New Push: Made in the U.S.A.
Wall Street Journal 07/02/2012
AMR Adds Airbus as SupplierWall Street Journal 07/21/2011
The health of the U.S. economy June 2011- banks still have large holdings of risky assets
06/04/2011
From the second quarter of 2009, to the first quarter of 2011, Cit Holdings had troubled assets come down from $582 billion to $337 billion. Like other large banks in its group Citi still has large amounts of troubled assets.
Linked Articles
AXA Arm to Buy Holdings From Citi
Wall Street Journal 06/08/2011
Banks May Need More CapitalWall Street Journal 06/04/2011
BP's steady focus on safety under CEO Bob Dudley
04/20/2011
Dudley says BP is not going to get off the path of focus on safety, and "stepping up the accelerator of performance, thats not going to happen." BP's second quarter 2012 performance reflected lower levels of production to permit maintenance and improvements in infrastructure at its deep water oil fields in the Gulf of Mexico. Similiar maintenance will be undertaken at North Sea fields in the rest of 2012. Cost cutting on maintenance and infrastructure improvements to improve profit performance created an environment that led to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and created huge legal liabilities.
Linked Articles
BP Posts Unexpectedly Large Loss
New York Times 07/31/2012
The Lessons of Deepwater HorizonWall Street Journal 04/20/2011
The Fall of an American Icon- HP, Lee Apotheker and the Autonomy Acquisition Inc.
02/18/2011
The Autonomy acquisition charge of $8.8 billion announced by CEO Meg Whitman on Nov. 20, 2012, come at a time of declining sales and margins in its printer and PC businesses. The costly charges on bad acquisitions by H-P is likely to hurt investment in R&D for years.
Linked Articles
Hewlett's Loss: A Folly Unfolds By the Numbers
New York Times 11/20/2012
Chief Reboots H-P After ScandalWall Street Journal 02/18/2011
How a services-led consumption based economy has failed America through a loss of jobs, prosperity and prestige.
01/21/2011
Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of GE, says the concept that the US could transition from a technology based export-oriented economic powerhouse to a services-led consumption based economy was fundamentally wrong. Mathew Slaughter of the Tuck School, Dartmouth, in a WSJ op-ed piece argues for a textbook principle of comparitive advantage, without considering the way it operates in a real the real world situation facing America as it struggles for economic renewal.
Linked Articles
Comparative Advantage and American Jobs
Wall Street Journal 01/26/2011
Jeffrey R. Immelt - A blueprint for keeping America competitiveWashington Post 01/21/2011
Why at the heart of the Volcker Rule for bank regulation, according to Mr. Volcker, is the idea of CEO attestation
10/28/2010
Volcker's advice about writing the rule was to keep it broad so that it limited the room for evasion. Volcker advised regulators to remember what Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said about pornography -"I know it when I see it." Treasury Secretary Lew pointed to the responsibility of the top executive to "set the right tone," for the whole organization.
Linked Articles
Volcker Rule to Require CEOs Guarantee Compliance
Wall Street Journal 12/06/2013
Volcker on His 'Rule'— Keep It BroadWall Street Journal 10/28/2010
Research and Development (R&D) approaches of pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and Glaxo with smaller budgets and smaller units
07/01/2010
Linked Articles
Pfizer Profit Declines 19% After Loss of Lipitor Patent
New York Times 05/01/2012
Glaxo Tries Biotech Model to Spur Drug InnovationsWall Street Journal 07/01/2010
Long standing reputations for quality and safety damaged by failures in quality systems at J&J McNeil and Toyota.
02/02/2010
Both Toyota and J&J Mcneil unit responded poorly and with long time lags to federal agencies that supervise safety for their products. Both companies took along time to investigate the consumer complaints, one for faulty brake pedal and the other for musty odor from Tylenol Arthritis caplet bottles.
Linked Articles
Maker of Tylenol Explains Actions Taken to Alleviate Musty Smell of Pills
New York Times 03/17/2010
Obama Administration Says It Is 'Not Finished With Toyota'Wall Street Journal 02/02/2010
Danone and P&G's (Procter & Gamble) innovative strategies for reaching low income customers in emerging markets.
12/12/2009
In 2004 Indonesian managers showed Franck Riboud, CEO of Danone, a pyramid of customers in Indonesia's population of 240 million people. It showed only 20 million customers at the top of the pyramid as the only ones who could afford Danone products. At that point Ribaud made up his mind to go after the large number of people at the lower end of the pyramid and come with strategies to do this profitably. By 2010 46% of Danone's sales were from emerging markets, up from 10% a decade earlier, showing the pace of the change. Unilever, P&G, Nestle, Colgate-Palmolive and other companies are following similiar strategies. P&G has used Mexico as a lab for experimenting with new products at low price points and Danone has done this in Indonesia.
Linked Articles
Danone Expands Its Pantry to Woo the World's Poor
Wall Street Journal 06/25/2010
P.& G. Sees the World as Its ClientNew York Times 12/12/2009
Edmund Phelps, Nobel winner 2006, on what capitalism really is, and Obama's speech at Georgetown on its current crisis.
04/15/2009
Phelps gives alucid and admirable description of what capitalism is and what it is not, and how best to understand it and employ it.
Linked Articles
Uncertainty bedevils the best system
Unknown 04/15/2009
From President Obama, Economic Clarity but Little CourageWashington Post 04/15/2009
The shift in management at Toyota to Akio Toyoda and the changing priorities as the market changes.
02/24/2009
What worked for Toyota in the past doesn't work anymore, and rapid expansion by CEO's before Akio Toyoda brings a whole range of problems even before the recall disaster of 2010. The company's narrow Nagoya, Japan, based management world view, with hardly any American representation on its Board, only makes things worse.
Linked Articles
Akio Toyoda - Toyota's plan to repair its public image
Washington Post 02/09/2010
A Scion Drives Toyota Back to BasicsWall Street Journal 02/24/2009
Economist Paul Krugman who just won the Nobel prize says Gordon does good.
10/13/2008
Paul Krugman says Gordon Brown has done much good with his initative and proper direction of the rescue effort giving all countries good leadership in a global crisis.
Linked Articles
New York Times 10/13/2008
British Prime Minister’s Stock Rises as His Bank Plan Lifts Stocks WorldwideNew York Times 10/15/2008
The problems with Google's strategy in its acquisition of Motorola Mobility
08/15/2011
Will Google attempt to run a manufacturing business with low margins?
Linked Articles
Wall Street Journal 04/11/2012
Google to Buy Motorola in Patents PlayWall Street Journal 08/15/2011
The politicizing of the 2011 budget process- Obama, Cantor and McConnell (1)
07/14/2011
The negotiations taking place for the U.S. budget behind closed doors is against the spirit of the Budget Act of 1974, says a former CBO assistant general counsel and Stanford professor of constitutional law. The law requires transparency and accountability and sets forth a process for public scrutiny of the budget in Congressional hearings. This has not happened and in its place both political parties are seeing this as a start to the 2012 presidential election, with the public sorely left out of the process.
Linked Articles
Budget Shell Games Are Contrary to Law
Wall Street Journal 07/14/2011
Top Democrats laud GOP debt-ceiling move - The Washington PostWashington Post 07/14/2011
Pfizer's focus on its core pharmaceutical business in 2011-2015
05/02/2011
Rockoff's interview with Pfizer CEO, Ian Read, in which Read describes his strategy of focussing on new drug development and locating closer to hubs with large universities and research centers such as La Jolla, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Cambridge, England. Pfizer sold its infant nutrition business to Nestle as part of this plan.
Linked Articles
Pfizer Profit Declines 19% After Loss of Lipitor Patent
New York Times 05/01/2012
Life Beyond Lipitor for Pfizer ChiefWall Street Journal 05/02/2011
The safety failures that could have been prevented with stronger oversight and control for the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster
03/21/2011
The independent parliamentary panel in Japan concuded in its July 2012 Report that the nuclear accident at the Fukushima plant was "a profoundly man-made event." Here in its investigations after the accident the Wall Street Journal finds some of the safety flaws that could have been corrected but were not due to the compete lack of effectiveness of the safety agency and its failure to do its job. As a result licenses for forty year old nuclear reactor designs and installation designs were simply renewed without requiring changes or shutting down these reactors. It is these older designs that were also improperly installed that failed.
Linked Articles
Japan Plant Had Troubled History
Wall Street Journal 03/21/2011
Design Flaw Fueled Nuclear DisasterWall Street Journal 07/01/2011
Angela Merkel's experience with the reunification of East and West Germany and her views of the eurozone crisis
01/30/2011
The perceptions of the eurozone crisis of ordinary Germans and of former East German Angela Merkel are colored by the period of reunification of the two Germany's. This was paid for with a"solidarity surcharge" tax paid by Germans amounting to $1.7 trillion and led in its early stages to 4 million unemployed in the eastern part and 20% unemployment. It took over a decade for East Germany to build new modernized industries in the larger cities of the east, but still leaves the rural parts of former East Germany in a neglected state as young peoplemoved out. During this period industry in the west also regained lost global competitiveness, especially in industries such as automobiles and advanced machinery, using wage restraint agreements with unions and increases in productivity. Germans see the need for eurozone countries in the southern part of Europe needing to make similiar sacrifices and see the tax evasion in Italy and Greece as unacceptable. The real estate bubble, the lack of transparency for banks bad loans, and out of control regional spending in Spain is also seen in a similiar light. Greece is seen as the most egregious offendor because of the bad financial accounting that grossly understated the extent of the bad loans. Less publicized in Germany is the role played in the bad loans through poor lending practices of German and French banks and that as experts have pointed out Germany was to some extent bailing out German banks when it was bailing out Greece- till German banks reduced their exposure to Greece in 2011.
Linked Articles
In former East Germany, anxious residents resent paying for Europe’s problems - The Washington Post
Washington Post 06/21/2012
Merkel's Defense of Euro Forged in East GermanyNew York Times 01/30/2011
GE, GE Capital and CEO Immelt's legacy- skepticism about the role of GE CEO Immelt as head of the President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness
01/21/2011
Linked Articles
GE Seeks Exit from Banking Business
Wall Street Journal 04/10/2015
Obama's Corporate MakeoverNew York Times 01/21/2011
Reviving American Manufacturing- the views of Anthony Liveris and Andy Grove
07/01/2010
Anthony Liveris is CEO of Dow Chemical and Andy Grove headed Intel Corp.
Linked Articles
Dow Chemical's CEO on How to Revive Manufacturing
Wall Street Journal 02/23/2012
Andy Grove: How America Can Create JobsBusinessWeek 07/01/2010
Apple products at manufacturing plants in China and at retail stores in the U.S.- low worker pay and lack of future prospects
05/29/2010
The high margins for Apple achieved through a combination of keeping costs low- even at the risk of providing poor wage and working conditions for the majority of employees employed in the retail stores in the U.S. and in supplier Foxconn plants in China- and by a grasp for innovation and technology. The paradox of a well deserved image for pioneering in technological innovation and the indifference to working conditions and prospects for employees who add value in manufacturing and customer interface. This model of growth is a recent development, put in place after 1997. In 1995-1997 Apple was nearing collapse under Michael Spindler and Gil Amelio, as documented by WSJ technology reporter Jim Carlton in his book- "Apple- The Inside Story of Intrigue, Egomania, and Business Blunders." Steve Jobs returned as CEO in 1997 and set the future course and this model in place emphasizing design, his ability to grasp technologies that would appeal to customers, and hired Tim Cook to set up the manufacturing which had high rate of defects and higher costs. The model was as full of paradoxes, of genius combined with mediocre behavioursas the man Steve Jobs. Tim Cook has responded to criticism in 2012 by having the Fair Labor association audit Foxconn plants in China. Foxconn increased wages in 2012, shifted plants to the interior of China, and increased use of robotics.
Linked Articles
Wall Street Journal 05/29/2010
Apple Stores Army, Long on Loyalty but Short on PayNew York Times 06/23/2012
The failure of CEO's before Akio Toyoda to address quality problems at Toyota.
01/28/2010
Quality problems were evident as early as 2006. Both CEO's Okuda and Watanable failed to get agrip on these problems in the midst of rapid expansion.
Linked Articles
Akio Toyoda - Toyota's plan to repair its public image
Washington Post 02/09/2010
Toyota Heir Faces Crisis at the WheelWall Street Journal 01/28/2010
The huge downsizing in the auto industry creates the need for big government supported initatives in retraining.
05/21/2009
Vicotr Brown and the 60,000 former workers at GM's BUick City have worked at GM all their lives, and can't imagine anything else. How does one get them from joining the ranks of the permanently unemployed, is a challenge for the government. THe labor underutilization rate expected to reach 20% for 2010, could threaten the economic recovery, and put everything at risk.
Linked Articles
Stuck at Unemployed: When A Layoff Becomes a Lifestyle
Washington Post 06/06/2009
The Last Holdouts Cast Their Lot With G.M.New York Times 05/21/2009
GE (General Electric), GE Capital, CEO Immelt and the global financial crisis of 2008
03/07/2009
Linked Articles
Wall Street Journal 01/26/2011
Behind the Curtain at G.E.New York Times 03/07/2009
Akio Toyoda brings a broader mindset, American and overseas experience to his CEO role.
01/12/2009
The grandson of the founder was educated in the U.S. and worked in the Chinese operations. He brings a broad exposure to countries around the world that his predecessors lacked with their more parochial backgrounds. This will be invaluable as he steers Toyota back to its roots and accomodates a changing world.
Linked Articles
New York Times 06/02/2010
Toyota, Needing Change, Taps a Scion to LeadWall Street Journal 01/12/2009
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