Silurians Press Cub ~ David Gelles ~ December 21, 2022

http://www.silurians.org/
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Author and New York Times Reporter David Gelles Dissects
the Legacy of The Man Who Broke Capitalism, Jack Welch, on December 21
By Joe Berger, President
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For two decades, Jack Welch the CEO of General Electric was lauded as the paragon of
a modern business executive, someone who by 2001 had turned GE into
the world’s most valuable company and brought huge profits to its shareholders.
But that reputation has acquired more than a few chinks in no small part as a result
of the reporting and conceptualizing of our guest speaker David Gelles for
his recent book, “The Man Who Broke Capitalism.”
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Gelles showed how Welch ruthlessly ran the company to maximize profits at the expense
of the lives of his workers and the needs of his consumers. Welch closed factories and
fired employees by the tens of thousands, mandating that the bottom 10 percent of workers
be fired each year. He embraced offshoring and outsourcing, sending labor overseas and turning to other companies to provide back-office functions like accounting and printing.
He took an industrial company that made its money selling appliances, light bulbs, and
jet engines into one that made most of its money from unregulated banking.
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Dozens of CEOs followed his lead, earning multimillion dollar salaries that increasingly dwarfed
the stagnating compensation of their average workers while finding ways for their companies
and themselves to pay little or no taxes. His legacy may be evident in the deeply divided country
we have today.
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Gelles was our guest speaker at the Silurians Press Club luncheon on Dec. 21
at the National Arts Club at 15 Gramercy Park South.
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He is now a reporter on the Climate Desk of the New York Times and was for several years
the writer of its Corner Office column. He was part of the team that made “Boeing’s Fatal Flaw,”
a documentary film that won the News and Documentary Emmy for outstanding business coverage. Before joining the Times in 2013, he spent five years with the Financial Times, a highlight of which was his jailhouse interview with Bernie Madoff. His previous book was “Mindful Work: How Meditation is Changing Business from the Inside Out,” which was published by:
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2015.

The date: Wednesday, December 21, 2022
The time: Noon.
The place: The National Arts Club, 15 Gramercy Park South.