Did this guy work for Bain Capital? Movie clip from 1991.

[canoeist52]

"Other People's Money" speech by Danny DeVito

This film explains what happened to our manufacturing economy, My family experienced this personally during this era, My husband, other family members and friends lost their jobs at a company that was in business for over a century to these bottom feeders.

[WhoIsNumberNone]

1. Bane Capital was probably the inspiration for this movie

Somebody in Hollywood was way ahead of the curve on this.

[baldguy]

2. Sounds reasonable. Even inspiring. But Danny "Larry The Liquidator" DeVito is 100% DEAD WRONG!

Part of a company's responsibility to it's stockholders is to remain competitive in a changing market. For the example in the movie: there's no reason why a wire & cable company shouldn't be able to re-tool to produce fiber optics, if that's where the market is going. They still have the management team, marketing, sales, customer service, shipping, facilities etc etc etc, in short all the components of the company that aren't involved directly in manufacturing. And they already have a list of clients - which is often the most valuable part of a business.

The expectation that communities should reduce their tax levy, or that employees should accept a reduction in wages assumes that the services they provide have a lower value than they had previously. That's just never the case. The community would still offer the same police, fire & municipal services and the same infrastructure, and the employees still offer the same knowledge & abilities as before. Why should they be paid less?

This is the central failure of American capitalism in the last half-century: the headlong rush to the bottom - and the deliberate destruction of American manufacturing & market share - in search of an increasingly small short term profit. This is at it's core a losing strategy. In today's world, the "buggy whip makers" are parasitic American capital investment firms that buy American companies in order to break them up & liquidate them, taking the leftovers as profit. They were once big sharks in a small pond, intent on creating an ocean for themselves to swim in. But now that the ocean has been made, they're just small fish.

[baldguy]

3. Willard needed to watch his cartoons.