It has been troubling me that President Obama seems to look so sour all the time. What is up with the CEO of the United States?
It is not his fault the country is nearly in Chapter 11, but why has so little gone right since he got the job? How did the land of the free get to be the land of the watched? How can more than 1% of the population have top secret security clearance while another 0.5% are in jail?
America Inc. is the land of go-go capitalism; it is a business Goliath, so how is it that it has such a massive trade deficit that amounts to a massive yearly loss of about 3% of GDP? The economy runs with massive losses fiscal and trade and is only solvent because of smoke and mirrors in its Treasury, which hits the bond market like a steam hammer month in and out.
This is an enterprise going to the wall fast. Who is at fault here? Is this the fault of the stakeholders or the management? It is certainly not the fault of the citizens on the shop floor. In corporate America the management is held responsible. Management is set up to manage. If it manages badly it needs to be fired. Of course there are elections for that, aren’t there?
However with 500,000 elected officials in the U.S., who exactly do you vote out?
The CEO looks so bitter, because he can’t get anything done. He can send all the memos he likes and can put in place all the strategies he wants. They simply won’t get done.
With half a million elected representatives out there, who exactly is in charge of anything? Unlike a proper company the U.S. government, like its European cousins or North Korea, has no competition in its home market. There is no cut throat competition keeping the operation lean. Even the FTC Bureau of competition is a monopoly.
While Chapter 11 is over the horizon, the can just gets kicked down the road. The USA is pre-bankruptcy GM, only the next scale up. So if the U.S. was a giant enterprise how would it get turned around? Sadly most huge badly run concerns go bust first. However, some do come back from the brink.
The classic turnaround recipe is to downsize the headcount, rationalize activities and focus on core value adding activities. Out go the company jet fleet, flying the CEO’s dog around, the loss making divisions, the cross subsidising of loss making activities, and the grandiose global posturing. Headcount is cut back dramatically, pennies are pinched; accountability is focused on.
So is the sequester the beginning of this? Is the restructuring a failing America Inc. starting up again?
Perhaps.
Has anyone noticed much change since the “sequester” set the country on the way to potential solvency? Where exactly was all this money going that when it stopped, not much else did? This is an immense amount of money amounting to a huge burden of taxation. Poof, gone!
Hopefully people will note that and like the idea of more of the same. So perhaps someone at the top who will do to the U.S. what Jack Welch did to GE. Will someone come along to cut the fat and whip the state into shape?
Meanwhile the U.S. has all the flexibility and grace of a Detroit carmaker and its future looks as uncertain. If its ability to sell bonds to fund its vast losses ends, it will fall into bankruptcy.
With the enterprise log jammed, it is no wonder its current CEO looks down in the mouth, but the question is, do the shareholders have the stomach for the reorganization and re-engineering required?