Sublime

One day, while pondering the problem and rereading the annual survey, Pfau zeroed in on

“I just think you should stop ranting at inequality,” a friend in private equity had snapped at him a few nights before the KKR event. “It’s a real turn-off.” Walker had broken what in his circles were important taboos: Inspire the rich to do more good, but never, ever tell them to do less harm; inspire them to give back, but never, ever tell them

Over and over again, the financial system was, in some narrow way, discredited. Yet the big Wall Street banks at the center of it just kept on growing, along with the sums of money that they doled out to twenty-six-year-olds to perform tasks of no obvious social utility.

Over time, because of the competitive nature of business, most business designs are no longer allowed to make a…

Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.

economy, legal issues were making the business model look riskier.

so-called great risk shift, through which corporate America has stabilized its own income statements over a generation by off-loading uncertainty onto workers; and the ways in which shareholders were running companies more and more for themselves, to the detriment of every other stakeholder.

500 million in profit by 2017. Instead, the company was on pace to lose nearly $1 billion as the costs of its rapid expansion grew.

When financial wizardry and short-term returns trump prudence and long-term value creation, customers and employees suffer.

These executives had had jobs—great jobs, but still just jobs.