Yeah, Swarfy kinda beat me to it (DEBT), but specifically:
I sincerely think that the secret to big business is keeping it small. Your customers have to believe that they're the only thing keeping that business alive. Lose that, and you're all done.
AND INTEREST. INTEREST, INTEREST, INTEREST.
It
can seem astonishing to the innocent to see really smart people in a business where a steady 10% yearly profit is a sign of good business practices, practices that are required to keep investor confidence - and they will sign on for a 12% or 15% yearly interest "short-term" loan, shoot some of these "collapsing credit" loans make usury look quaint, 25%, 40%,
unpayable is a better term - take it, believing (claiming?) that they will "turn the corner" somehow - even if
their own exact previous job was working as one of the "bankers" who make damn sure you'll never actually dig out from under your short-term loan!
On the one hand, it can sometimes appear as though taking a whole bunch of really, really, smart, 130+ I.Q. people and putting them in the same room and saying "You're all really smart, figure something out" instantly turns them all dumb as muffins; on the other hand, as the man says, the "best" of these guys have absolutely no respect for company names, reputations, shareholders, product quality or any of that rot,
the only thing that matters is their own ability to suck money out of somebody/something/somewhere.
They all went to school together, they share private jet rides to the same economic summits in Vail and Switzerland and the Bahamas, one week you can play golf with the exact same person who is going to launch a vicious, share-crushing hostile takeover the next week, and - you'll be playing golf again the week after that! You'll just be hiring each other or serving on a board together the year after that, no reason to get
unpleasant or anything.
The only losers are honest people, doing actual
work. I really wish I could exaggerate or that this wasn't true, but we are deeply, deeply screwed. Took our eye off the ball for 30, 40 years - "Amusing ourselves to death", as it's been described - and everything worth stealing is stole. Even more astonishing, there are some people actually convinced that -
poor people stole it all! :laughing3: That ain't where it goes, in my long experience. :-\
(I have this weird kind of problem where I think finance & international business/govt. is
interesting and where Muffy B. B-Starlet left her underpants last night is
boring, but it's my own fault, I know.)