Write Your Own Joke
John McCain's business advisor, Carly Fiorina, asserts that Sarah Palin is not qualified to run a major company. This is by way of discounting Barack Obama's experience.
But what about Ms Fiorina? Is she qualified to run a major company? She took over Hewlett Packard when its stock was 45.36. When she left it was 20.14, a performance of -56%. There was also that unpleasant business with corporate snooping. And laying off 7,000 employees. Sounds like the very model of a Republican titan of industry.
On the strength of these accomplishments, she arranged received $21 million in severance pay.
After she left the company apparently did relatively well. Another chapter in the annals of U.S. meritocracy.
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Yes, I think Carly could give W himself a run for his money, in terms of business acumen.
-- ARG
September 16, 2008 2:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Carly Fiorina is a walking disaster. I used to see her at Revolution, as well, in the kitchen, along with Frank Raines. She seems to have the reverse Midas touch.
September 16, 2008 2:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
A joke? I thought Carly Fiorina was the punchline to one...
Actually HP might have got away cheap on that deal. Only $21M to get rid of her? She would have cost them much more if she was allowed to stick around. Makes sense that she is now a McCain economic advisor...
September 16, 2008 2:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Much as I dislike Ms. Fiorina, it is not fair to compare stock prices pre- and post- acquisitions. A better measure might be total market capitalization. I don't know, offhand, those figures for HP. However there is no denying she was a divisive and ultimately unpopular figure; the severance package may be thought of as the price to make her go away rather than any reward.
September 16, 2008 2:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
We might also note that Fiorina's departure spurred a stock market rally for HP, and we know the Market (chorus of heavenly choir) is never wrong.
September 16, 2008 4:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't know whether anyone's proved it but as Group President of Lucent's global service provider business, it's likely she was the one who pushed vendor financing (think routers sold to a Turkish startup ISP with no assets and no customers, for one) which caused the company's demise (now Alcatel-Lucent.
September 16, 2008 3:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
I left AT&T Bell Labs at the end of 1995 saying, "If these people keep doing business this way the company will be in big trouble and I don't want to be part of it".
After a job change and a few acquisitions, in 1999 there we were back in Lucent Technologies. Moving on yet again in 2000 and watching the stock fall in 2001, I learned that the Lucent executives had been selling stock instead of products. (Anyone reading Kevin Phillips' last books would recognize this story...)
I paid 20x more in taxes than the stock is worth now. (My wife and I had a "disciplined" approach: sell 10% per quarter... What patsies we were!)
P.S. Stephen King does fantasy, but Kevin Phillips does hard reality. Anyone wanting to read something on a dark and stormy night, try "American Theocracy" and "Bad Money".
September 17, 2008 12:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
If Fiorina thinks that McCain, Palin, Obama and Biden would not be capable of running a Fortune 500 company, I wonder what was special about Dick Cheney's experience (spent purely in government) that made him a good (?!?!) CEO of Halliburton?
September 16, 2008 3:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Touche'
I could run a major corporation. I could find a place to spend $21 million just as well as Ms Fiorina did.
Seriously, running any organization can be done by anyone with the integrity to accept good advice and act on it, the background and judgment to recognize good advice, and the willingness to surround oneself with people more highly qualified than you. Unfortunately, we have seen what the lack of any of those qualities results in, or maybe we are fortunate because we don't need to watch Palin in action to know the result.
September 16, 2008 4:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
But Cheney was NOT a good CEO:
From the WaPo Tuesday, January 11, 2005; Page E03
By Allan Sloan
'...talk about Halliburton's well-executed $5 billion escape from its asbestos problems, most of which Cheney created when he orchestrated Halliburton's purchase of Dresser Industries in 1998. Few people connect this problem with Cheney, but they should, given that he was in charge at the time and got a raise as a result of buying Dresser.
Dresser's asbestos problem was only a potential one when Halliburton bought it, but rapidly metastasized into a threat to Halliburton's existence. By then, though, Cheney had gone off to Washington.
Had he still been Halliburton's chief executive, Wall Street might have forced him to take responsibility for the asbestos problem he imported to his company. But because he wasn't around -- and because his successor, Dave Lesar, was a stand-up guy -- Cheney has largely escaped scrutiny for this fiasco.
Now that Halliburton has managed to extract itself from its asbestos liability by paying a ton of cash and stock to trusts that will compensate victims and their lawyers, we can get a handle on how much Dresser's piece of the problem cost Halliburton. It turns out to be almost as much as Halliburton paid for the company.
While Halliburton's all-stock takeover of Dresser was valued at $7.7 billion when it was announced in February 1998, it was worth only $5.3 billion when it was completed seven months later. The bankruptcy settlement is costing Halliburton just about that much: around $2.8 billion in cash, Halliburton stock with a market value of $2.3 billion the day before Dresser's bankruptcy was resolved and miscellaneous odds and ends and potential payments.
The bankruptcy resolution, which became final on Jan. 3, covered both the Dresser problems and the smaller asbestos problems that Halliburton already had.
Halliburton hasn't said how much each set of liabilities cost, but Dresser is clearly way more than half. How do I know that? Because a Halliburton bankruptcy filing discloses that "historical Dresser" accounts for about two-thirds of the claims, and the filing also shows that claims from Dresser's business average from 2.5 to five times as much as equivalent claims from Halliburton's businesses.
Do the math, and at least five-sixths -- 83 percent -- of the claims costs are from Dresser. So let's attribute 85 percent of the costs to Dresser. That seems reasonable, if not conservative.
That works out to around $4.3 billion. That doesn't include what Dresser-related claims cost Halliburton between the purchase in 1998 and the Chapter 11 filing in 2002 by Dresser and other Halliburton subsidiaries. It doesn't include offsets for possible insurance payments, either, but I don't know how to value those.'
So let's all agree that Cheney is an incompetant boob whose reach exceeds his grasp.
September 16, 2008 5:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
A joke?
hum
What's the difference between an incompetent CEO and Carly Fiorina?
Lipstick
September 16, 2008 4:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Um... I don't get it.
Seems like a trick question to me.
-- ARG
September 16, 2008 5:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hewlett Packard....a Voice for Change.
September 16, 2008 4:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
The McCain Campaign....a Voice for Change.
September 18, 2008 3:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Personal history doesn't seem to have any consequences in terms of credibility. It's probably always been that way, but these days when voices can be heard literally around the world the effect is worse. And these days when information is so easily obtainable, how can it be justified.
September 16, 2008 6:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
At the moment, I can't think of an appropriate joke about golden parachutes and trophy vice presidential nominations for upwardly ambitious women mismanagers. Something scatological involving "the peter-less principle," or someting like that, keeps suggesting itself. Not wishing to follow that thought any further, I could only come up with a few more vagrant verses from the void. Call this entry in the catalogue:
Now, back to the "real poetry" of John Milton and Book II of Paradise Lost, wherein Satan looks for a way out of Perdition only to find the key to Hell's exit held by this hideous half-woman/half-snake who has sprung from his own head and who keeps calling him "father" to both herself (Sin) and her son Death. Wow. This sick Christian theology shit certainly can both mesmerize and nauseate at the same time! No wonder the repugnant ones cannot resist dabbling in the demonism. It just seems so perfectly designed for their perverted proclivities.
September 16, 2008 8:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hey, why did you crossed out "arranged?"
Please don't tell me it's because the board set her pay package and used a reputable executive pay consultancy to do it.
Because yes, that's how it's done.
No... that's how it's arranged.
September 16, 2008 8:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ok, the McCain economic cabinet consists of Fiorina, Phil Gramm, the guy who enabled today's Wall Street meltdown, and the Crackberry guy. His foreign policy is being led by Randy Scheunemann, who led the infamous Committee for the Liberation of Iraq; so, given these (lacking) credentials, who else would be a good fit for McCain? Here are my picks:
Angelo Mozilo for Housing and Urban Development.
Ken Lay, for Secretary of Energy (somebody just has to go down to South America and tell him all is forgiven, and he can come back)
Karl Rove, for bipartisan comity and outreach.
OJ Simpson, for race relations and women's issues.
September 16, 2008 11:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
LOL
September 17, 2008 1:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
Clarence Thomas for AG.
Dennis Kozlowski for Commerce.
Bernie Ebbers for FTC or FCC or both.
September 17, 2008 12:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
I dunno, if anyone's an expert on not being able to run a major company its gotta be Good-Time Carly. Look at all the firms lining up to hire her in the wake of her success at HP.
September 17, 2008 5:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
CNN BULLETIN: General Motors announced today that they hired Sarah Palin to come in and turn the company around. Mrs. Palin brings with her the vast experience she had being Mayor of E. Yickwaterville, Alaska.
Mrs Plain said she was on a mission from God, who told her; "What's good for General Motors is good for the USA."
September 17, 2008 8:26 AM | Reply | Permalink