Weekend wrapup

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Why must companies grow their profits every 90 days? Has Wall Street fundamentally ruined America?

I worked for a consulting firm. It employed 10,000 high-paid professionals, and had revenues of $1B. But that wasn't good enough. The company -- or should I say, the CEO -- wanted higher revenues (and bigger bonuses). In five years, it announced revenues would be $5B. Within three years it was toast, and all those good-paying jobs were gone.

When I ran my branch I was extremely proud to have 75 professionals working hard in American companies. Not good enough. The company wanted 100 professionals working, so they shut down the branch.

When it comes to food, businesses must find more and more ways to pitch their wares, and that includes the unhealthy choices.

Food Politics.com writes:

For reasons that make no sense to me at all, corporations are not allowed to simply make a profit. Their profits must constantly increase. They must report growth in profits to Wall Street every 90 days.

For food companies, this is not so easy. We already have twice as many calories available in the food supply as needed by our population - nearly 4,000 calories per capita per day. How to deal with this? Find new buyers.

General Mills says its “recipe for profitable growth” will target three specific groups: Hispanics, aging baby boomers (those aged 55 and over), and millennials (baby boomers’ kids aged 16-33).