How Did ‘Investor Satisfaction’ Ever Get to Be a Taxpayer Priority?

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Who died and left the investors in charge of America’s future? When did manufacturers, airlines, investment banks, mom and pop shoe stores (if there are any left) and big-box retailers decide that business practice didn’t mean anything and business presentation was the whole ball game?

Oops, take mom and pop out of that equation. They are still providing the sweat equity that built America. It’s the rest of the business world that has given up sweat in favor of equity. Except for sweating out quarterly reports. Plenty of that goin' around, but even they no longer make sense; Google makes record profits and their stock drops; Merrill Chase doesn’t lose as much as they were expected to lose and their stock goes up.

Slowly, inevitably, unendingly over the past three or four decades, we have seen our American business model—the finest on the planet—hijacked by investors. Not customers or clients, but investors. They made themselves King of the Hill. If there’s an unwarranted Freudian sli…