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If you think G.E. is bad, I encourage you to take a deeper look at Ford and gasp in shock and awe. The 2008 financial crisis didn’t treat either of these two co

If you think G.E. is bad, I encourage you to take a deeper look at Ford and gasp in shock and awe. The 2008 financial crisis didn’t treat either of these two companies well, but I’d much rather deal with G.E.’s finances than have to take on the mess that Ford is. Ford really should have declared bankruptcy like General Motors did then in the preceding crisis, and it was only through a miracle of financial engineering that they somehow managed to avoid it. To this day, you can still see the incredible burden it carries on the company.

Maakuth 7y ago
Not sure if you intentionally mentioned both, but it's worth noting that G.E. is General Electric, not General Motors.
- lawrenceyan 7y ago
  Yes, that was intentional. General Motors, the counter part to Ford as a car company, declared bankruptcy in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. The financial practices that led to General Motors having to declare bankruptcy were largely the same at Ford. Ford didn’t go bankrupt then, but they basically had to figuratively sell their soul in order to avoid doing so.
  - AmVess 7y ago
    Ford got rid of Volvo, Aston Martin, Jaguar, and Land Rover. All of these brands have been doing poorly since Ford sold them. Ford's relentless pursuit of cost cutting led them to keep many vehicles for far too long. Their former bread-and-butter model, the Ford Explorer, went 9 years in between platform changes. The ford Flex has been on the same platform for 11 years. The Ford Focus went 8 years without a change of platform. Further, their cost-cutting initiatives have earned many of their vehicles poor reliability marks to such an extent that Ford Focus sales are less than half of what they were in just 4 short years. I might add that Ford went upscale in price on a lot of its vehicles without an attendant increase in upscale features. The Ford Explorer sells about half of what it used to during its peak. Selling off car companies was a good idea. However, poor products, poor product planning, poor reliability, and a spineless vision of the future has put them into a bad spot with no real light on the very distant horizon.
    - randomcarbloke 7y ago
      Those three companies did better every year post-Ford, with the exception of AML's latest year.
crimsonalucard 7y ago
The problem is finance is so unnecessarily complex I have no idea what's going on.
- rco8786 7y ago
  Finance is necessarily complex.
  - crimsonalucard 7y ago
    No. You are completely and utterly wrong. This is definitive and final. It is very very naive to say that all the complexity in finance is necessary. It is not. Not. at. all. We are human and as such we build many things that are needlessly complex. Much of out software suffers from such baggage. If humans can cause such systems to be overly complex, then humans can cause such a thing to happen in the finance industry as well. You see overcomplexity in all systems that are typically built by more than one human from tax law to software all the way to: finance. You will note that such complexity in the things humans construct is especially prevalent in things that are abstracted away from the physical world as the physical world is bound by laws that place a huge energy cost on what a person can create. When things are abstract that cost is a magnitude lower. Software and finance are vicious examples that utterly annihilate your statement.
    - arcticbull 7y ago
      This also feels very much like the software engineer's desire to rewrite something they don't understand because they're sure that it's easier to rewrite than to understand. This stems from a lack of understanding that you yourself identify.
      - crimsonalucard2 7y ago
        I agree with you completely. I feel that if we rewrite the finance system we'll end up with a different mess. I'm only pointing to a problem not offering a solution. It's all adhoc design with no theory. If finance consisted of a bunch of axioms and theorems then we could find a algorithm that can optimize such a system. However finance like software is in the domain of design. As such we construct and create such systems with no quantitative formula for creating better systems or even defining what a better system is... What formula can quantitatively measure how much better capitalism is vs. communism? Or Vice versa. None. So you, are basically fully correct. A rewrite without formal theory on what is a better "finance" is like throwing darts blind folded. We only know the previous iteration didn't work, and we have no idea if the new design will function. In terms of probability, likely it will be nowhere near the perfection we strive for.
Animats 7y ago
Ford did not declare bankruptcy because it would have taken control from the Ford family. Ford's two-tier stock structure, which goes back about a century, keeps the family in control. That would not survive a reorganization.
dehrmann 7y ago
The issue with GE is that it sold or spun off a lot of its more marketable parts. What's left is either a focused industrial company or stuff no one wants.

Maakuth 7y ago

Not sure if you intentionally mentioned both, but it's worth noting that G.E. is General Electric, not General Motors.

lawrenceyan 7y ago
Yes, that was intentional. General Motors, the counter part to Ford as a car company, declared bankruptcy in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. The financial practices that led to General Motors having to declare bankruptcy were largely the same at Ford. Ford didn’t go bankrupt then, but they basically had to figuratively sell their soul in order to avoid doing so.
- AmVess 7y ago
  Ford got rid of Volvo, Aston Martin, Jaguar, and Land Rover. All of these brands have been doing poorly since Ford sold them. Ford's relentless pursuit of cost cutting led them to keep many vehicles for far too long. Their former bread-and-butter model, the Ford Explorer, went 9 years in between platform changes. The ford Flex has been on the same platform for 11 years. The Ford Focus went 8 years without a change of platform. Further, their cost-cutting initiatives have earned many of their vehicles poor reliability marks to such an extent that Ford Focus sales are less than half of what they were in just 4 short years. I might add that Ford went upscale in price on a lot of its vehicles without an attendant increase in upscale features. The Ford Explorer sells about half of what it used to during its peak. Selling off car companies was a good idea. However, poor products, poor product planning, poor reliability, and a spineless vision of the future has put them into a bad spot with no real light on the very distant horizon.
  - randomcarbloke 7y ago
    Those three companies did better every year post-Ford, with the exception of AML's latest year.

crimsonalucard 7y ago

The problem is finance is so unnecessarily complex I have no idea what's going on.

rco8786 7y ago
Finance is necessarily complex.
- crimsonalucard 7y ago
  No. You are completely and utterly wrong. This is definitive and final. It is very very naive to say that all the complexity in finance is necessary. It is not. Not. at. all. We are human and as such we build many things that are needlessly complex. Much of out software suffers from such baggage. If humans can cause such systems to be overly complex, then humans can cause such a thing to happen in the finance industry as well. You see overcomplexity in all systems that are typically built by more than one human from tax law to software all the way to: finance. You will note that such complexity in the things humans construct is especially prevalent in things that are abstracted away from the physical world as the physical world is bound by laws that place a huge energy cost on what a person can create. When things are abstract that cost is a magnitude lower. Software and finance are vicious examples that utterly annihilate your statement.
  - arcticbull 7y ago
    This also feels very much like the software engineer's desire to rewrite something they don't understand because they're sure that it's easier to rewrite than to understand. This stems from a lack of understanding that you yourself identify.
    - crimsonalucard2 7y ago
      I agree with you completely. I feel that if we rewrite the finance system we'll end up with a different mess. I'm only pointing to a problem not offering a solution. It's all adhoc design with no theory. If finance consisted of a bunch of axioms and theorems then we could find a algorithm that can optimize such a system. However finance like software is in the domain of design. As such we construct and create such systems with no quantitative formula for creating better systems or even defining what a better system is... What formula can quantitatively measure how much better capitalism is vs. communism? Or Vice versa. None. So you, are basically fully correct. A rewrite without formal theory on what is a better "finance" is like throwing darts blind folded. We only know the previous iteration didn't work, and we have no idea if the new design will function. In terms of probability, likely it will be nowhere near the perfection we strive for.

Animats 7y ago

Ford did not declare bankruptcy because it would have taken control from the Ford family. Ford's two-tier stock structure, which goes back about a century, keeps the family in control. That would not survive a reorganization.

dehrmann 7y ago

The issue with GE is that it sold or spun off a lot of its more marketable parts. What's left is either a focused industrial company or stuff no one wants.