Welch was not an industrialist who created value, instead he was a financial manipulator who extracted value. It's always been possible for financial statement

Welch was not an industrialist who created value, instead he was a financial manipulator who extracted value. It's always been possible for financial statements to obscure this type of situation, and it's always been a matter of integrity that a true leader can be counted on to do the right thing rather than be guided by pure greed & avarice, the ever-present temptation. And GE had a lot of value to extract, both built up from previous decades of reinvestment, and future revenue from manufacturing that was legendarily solid enough to be able to borrow more than it was worth whenever that might be a prudent strategy. The forward momentum was so inevitable, that complete imprudence could be tolerated for the foreseeable future by the time Welch took over. And that momentum can naturally conceal almost any incompetent non-leader's lack of ability, regardless of which leadership position they have finagled themselves into. At the time it was plain to see his approach would devastate everything that was touched in the long run. No surprises ever since, from his cohort who tend to be incapable of building new net manufacturing excellence. When you inherit productive, mature factories and can't run them as well as skin-in-the-game predecessors who had to pay for them as they were built, you know the unsuitability is strong in this one. It may take a while to realize, but it's kinda, sorta, completely undeniable when a manufacturer ends up with fewer productive factories than they would have otherwise had, as a direct result of your business "acumen".