David Gelles

David Gelles

David Gelles is an American award-winning journalist and author. He works for The New York Times climate team and was previously their business reporter for the “Corner Office” column.

If you want to understand the origins of the polarization, anger, and paralysis that are consuming the United States today, then The Man Who Broke Capitalism book is for you.

Reading the book makes you feel like you’re watching a stock ticker as it goes through a series of prices with highs and lows. The book points to Jack Welch, the famous General Electric CEO, who led the company to success and eventually transformed it into a “What happened story,” which can be compared to going from prom queen to a crackhead
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Jack Welch was once named the “Manager of the Century”. Over time, many of his notorious practices have been discredited. Such infamous policies include the “classification and dismissal policy,” in which employers dismissed the lowest-performing 10% of employees annually, the incessant mergers and acquisitions, and the sophisticated accounting practices that turned losses into revenue.

The book's synthesis presents Welch as one of the key figures in the collapse of capitalism, which transformed it from competitive markets into monopolies and finally into oligopolies.

Jack Welch was a hard worker, an ambitious and daring man who made decisions spontaneously, without the influence of boards or bureaucracy. Welch ran GE in such a way that, aware of globalization, he could implement crucial budget cuts. This resulted in thousands of job losses, the relocation of factories overseas, the downsizing of R&D departments, and their replacement by finance departments. This created financial instruments that would prove devastating to the company's survival.

Welch neglected research and development, failed to invest in new technologies, and created a system in which executives were engaged in a cutthroat competition similar to that of "Game of Thrones." They often reported losses as profits, made misleading acquisitions that later proved disastrous, cut business-critical costs, and generally manipulated the system to generate profits instead of organic growth.

GE collapsed in the 2000s. GE Capital had quadrupled its credit lines with debt financing. The financial instruments they developed played a pivotal role in the subprime crisis, devastating the housing market and their balance sheets. They received over $139 billion in government aid for their financial arm.

At the same time, their products flopped. They ignored the revolutionary opportunities they could have leveraged with far-sighted leadership and, for fear of failure, failed to cultivate a culture of risk by exploring and implementing new development methods. Once a company exposes these internal weaknesses, it's doomed. It can no longer innovate, and it's time to sell the stock.

But is Jack Welch solely responsible for the collapse of capitalism? Of course not, the problem is far more complex, but he marked the beginning of a new era and became a symbolic figure of that time, thanks to some of the political measures he advocated.

In truth, Welch was merely a symbolic figure for our current problems, but he got into this position through unprecedented self-promotion and the narcissism necessary to appear in every news cycle.

David Gelles reveals to the reader how Welch’s influence still persists today in corporations that regularly lay off thousands of workers. It has resulted in a contentious relationship with an entire generation of working-class people who can never find jobs with livable salaries.

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Fans of David Gelles also enjoy these authors:

1. Michael Connelly, author of the Harry Bosch Series.
2. James Patterson, author of the Alex Cross Series.
3. John Grisham, author of the Jake Brigance Series.
4. Pierce Brown, author of the Red Rising Series.
5. Frederick Forsyth, author of: The Day of the Jackal.

David Gelles: F.A.Q