Tag Archives: junk bonds

What genius thought Jim Hackett was the solution for Ford?

Well…hey, look at that…I’m not going to talk about trump today and I’m sure you are as relieved as I am…but, I am going to talk about something that has been puzzling me all week after Ford’s bonds were downgraded to junk status…what genius thought that Jim Hackett had the talent to be the solution for Ford’s problems? Let’s go back a ways to his tenure at Steelcase, a company that WAS the world’s largest furniture manufacturer until Hackett got done with it and bailed into “retirement”…we had a saying when I worked at Steelcase…that a monkey could cut jobs and outsource production…but that is Hackett’s only claim to fame there…taking over a company with over 11,000 employees and 9 manufacturing plants with good paying jobs…and turning that into a company with less than 3,000 employees and no manufacturing left in the US after outsourcing everything to plants in Mexico. No innovation, no understanding of the talent the company had, and no growth…and now he has done the same thing to Ford…and all they would have had to do is drive 150 miles or so over to this side of the state and they would see what a no talent hack he is…but I guess that doesn’t matter in the insular world of the 1% where the norm is to fail up and pay no consequences for stupidity or the lack of talent. I have been a Ford man my entire life and I feel for them for getting snowed by Hackett and putting the company in danger…maybe this is what it takes to break the cycle of the incestuous relationships that lead to the same few people getting chance after chance even after being an abject failure….geez….