For decades, General Electric was celebrated as the ultimate symbol of American manufacturing might, yet its collapse was triggered by a hidden asset class that had nothing to do with jet engines or lightbulbs. Here is how the world's most valuable company quietly transformed itself into an unregulated hedge fund, hiding a toxic balance sheet behind the illusion of industrial stability.
This investigation exposes the forensic timeline of how General Electric was hollowed out from within. While history often hails CEO Jack Welch as a management genius, this video argues he was the architect of a slow-motion disaster, prioritizing quarterly stock bumps over long-term product viability. We analyze the shift from the "Conglomerate Era" to the "Financialization Era," detailing how the company's financial arm, GE Capital, grew to eclipse its actual industrial division. It is a case study in how the pursuit of infinite growth led a 130-year-old titan into a liquidity trap during the 2008 financial crisis, forcing the ultimate dismantling of an American icon.
WHAT YOU WILL LEARN
- *The Shadow Bank* - How GE Capital operated as an unregulated financial institution that generated easy profits but exposed the company to catastrophic systemic risk.
- *The Cult of Shareholder Value* - Analyzing Jack Welch’s strategy of stripping assets and cutting R&D to fuel stock buybacks, sacrificing the future for the present.
- *The Liquidity Crisis* - Why the 2008 recession shattered the illusion of GE's AAA rating, revealing that the company could no longer fund its own daily operations.
- *The Creative Accounting* - How complex financial engineering masked the deteriorating health of the manufacturing core for nearly two decades.
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