Foreign Language music thread. by
Esox_Lucius 1 Dec 2022 9:33Music sung in a language other that English please, the occasional use of an English word in the same manner as some iconic English song throw in an odd French, Italian WHY phrase are acceptable too.
I'll kick it off with Mylene Farmer's tribute to the life and times of QPR fans.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHpUjq_k-kI
Foreign Language music thread. by
Esox_Lucius 1 Dec 2022 9:33Music sung in a language other that English please, the occasional use of an English word in the same manner as some iconic English song throw in an odd French, Italian WHY phrase are acceptable too.
I'll kick it off with Mylene Farmer's tribute to the life and times of QPR fans.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHpUjq_k-kI
West Brom Finances by
TacticalR 28 Dec 2022 21:35This seems quite common. At the moment I am reading 'The Innovation Delusion: How Our Obsession with the New Has Disrupted the Work That Matters Most', and the authors describe how Jack Welch decided to recast General Electric as a financial services company:
'When he took over as GE’s CEO in 1981, Jack Welch was eager to transform the company and identify new opportunities for growth. One of his early speeches as CEO was titled “Growing Fast in a Slow-Growth Economy,” and he took aggressive steps to make his topic a reality. Welch expanded GE into new lines of business, most notably financial services, by acquiring hundreds of companies. In doing so, he set fire to GE’s traditional image as a steady and reliable employer. Each year, “Neutron Jack” fired the bottom 10 percent of the company’s managers through his so-called rank-and-yank program, an approach that significantly reduced GE’s overall workforce.
Through Welch’s recasting of the stable manufacturing giant as a financial juggernaut, GE posted some amazing numbers over the course of his twenty-year reign. The company grew its net income from $1.65 billion in 1981 to $12.7 billion in 2000, and “rightsized” its workforce from 404,000 to 313,000. On the stock exchanges, GE’s value rose 4,000 percent. The profits came from Welch’s decisive turn away from manufacturing (hence the layoffs) and toward financial services. GE Capital’s presence in insurance and mortgages, as well as financing for aviation and energy, was, for a few years, well timed to ride the wave of American financial growth.
But the era of fast growth didn’t last. When Welch stepped down in 2001, his protégé and successor Jeffrey Immelt took over a company sprinting into a briar patch. Cruel reality hit in 2008, when GE stock plunged from $37.10 to $8.50 per share. The company was effectively saved from disaster by emergency investments, including a $3 billion infusion from Warren Buffett.
As the wreckage of the 2008 financial disaster became clearer, GE’s aggressive move into financial services in the mid-1990s looked worse and worse. It’s easy to see why Welch found this strategy appealing–after all, Fortune magazine named the energy financing giant Enron as America’s “most innovative company” each year from 1995 to 2000. It was obvious that GE needed to find new sources of revenue and new strategies for regaining the confidence of investors.'
If manufacturing capitalists can't make sufficient profits in manufacturing then they will use their capital for speculation.