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I love Thanksgiving, the American holiday par excellence. I celebrate this event by writing about business turkeys – bad puns -. You know, the kind of thing that leads people to say, "What a turkey!"
The turkey harvest has been excellent this year – without even including the odious things Donald Trump has done. But let's leave Trump's turkeys and those of his opponents in the place of the political writers, and stay with the turkeys of the business world.
Our main turkey is Elon Musk from Tesla Motors. In fact, it is a double turkey.
Musk sent a totally absurd tweet in August, when Tesla was trading $ 356 a share, claiming he had funding to privatize the company at $ 420.
The number 420, as even a non-user like me knows, is associated with marijuana. Which may explain why Musk chose this award. Or maybe it was just high when he pushed "send" on his tweet. Who knows?
Musk's false claim put the Securities and Exchange Commission on him because it affected the Tesla stock market. Musk then turned into a double turkey by refusing to accept a draft settlement between Tesla's lawyers and the SEC.
The withdrawal of Musk naturally caused the anger of the SEC. So when Musk changed his mind again and decided to settle, the SEC hit him for $ 20 million personally.
[NASA, rankled by Musk’s pot smoking, to launch safety review of SpaceX]
I wonder how many weeds – or how many turkeys to feed the poor – Musk could have bought with that $ 20 million if he had closed his mouth.
John Schnatter, the founder of Papa John's, now ousted, is at the height of Musk in the field of double turkeydom.
But what Schnatter did is far more mean than Musk's shabby behavior.
Schnatter, whose company was a major sponsor of professional football, blamed the kneeling players of the National Football League for the problems faced by Papa John's when selling his overpriced pizza. At best, Schnatter showed weak impulse control; at worst, racism. This maneuver worthy of eating was followed by a second turkey – his infamous internal email, the least said, the best. Moreover, the less we say about Schnatter, the better it is.
Now, to the big turkeys.
The advice of General Electric deserves his own flock. The board has left Jeff Immelt, hand-picked successor to Jack Welch (remember him?), Make huge deals that are now putting GE at risk. Last year, directors hired John Flannery, a GE Life member, to replace Immelt and attempt to repair it. It did not work.
So this year the council has sent Flannery back. I hope that Flannery's successor, Larry Culp, will succeed in repairing GE. I think a lot about Culp: I did very well as a shareholder of Danaher, the company he once ran, and I even nibbled the GE title a little bit since becoming a member. Which could make me a turkey too.
At the very least, GE board members involved in the Immelt and Flannery impasses should don turkey feathers. And maybe give their attendance fees to GE shareholders. Or give the fees to charities that help GE workers who have lost their jobs.
Now two other turkeys from the world of finance.
The first is Toys R Us, the once dominant chain of stores that was slaughtered after the mob was in debt.
Maybe Toys would eventually sink without even this debt, because Amazon.com (whose founder, Jeffrey P. Bezos, owner of the Washington Post) has broken all the obstacles.
But at a minimum, the debt and underinvestment that followed in Toys' business accelerated job losses for thousands of workers. Who does not have anything to be grateful for as the holidays approach.
Then comes Sears, which eventually went bankrupt this year after a decade of led by Eddie Lampert, a global hedge fund resident. In person, Lampert is an honest guy – I met and talked with him a few times – but he was not a decent leader of the Sears-Kmart combo.
Sears' long decline despite various games, Lampert forced the company to play with its assets and so tarnished its reputation that investors fled its funds, reducing its wealth. But his financial hardships are not like those Sears workers who lost their jobs, Sears owners and owners who were burned.
Finally, there are some of my media colleagues who were ready to make a huge deal on the supposed invasion of the United States by Central American migrants.
The invasion seemed like nothing, but it involves things I do not know much about. However, when Margaret Sullivan, a media critic for The Post, said that the cover was a lot of noise for nothing, it was enough for me to feel comfortable putting turkeys at people from my own company.
And it will do it. It does not matter if you share my point of view, enjoy the season, declare a truce and try to get along. A happy Thanksgiving to you and yours, and a happy winter festival of your choice.
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