The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 25 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Immelt: Not shrinking GE Capital before 2008 was a mistake
“By the time the financial crisis hit, not having GE Capital be smaller, you know, clearly was a mistake, right?”
Immelt: Washington Mutual's collapse was worse for 2008 than Lehman's
“Most people think about the day Lehman Brothers went bankrupt as the worst day in the financial crisis, but it actually was the day Washington Mutual went bankrupt, which was like two weeks later on a Friday because all the bondholders got wiped out.”
Immelt: GE suffered in 2008 from aggregate size, not toxic assets
“Think about the financial crisis, what did we get wrong? We were too big in aggregate size. It wasn't that we were, we had a lot of toxic assets. It wasn't that we're redlining risk and things like that. We were too big.”
Immelt: US and Canadian manufacturing costs now equal Mexico and China
“My hunch is you could go through product after product and making it in Canada or the U S is probably just about the same as making it in Mexico or China today.”
Immelt: Next-generation leaders must maintain manufacturing jobs where they sell
“If I sell in the US, I better have a certain amount of jobs in the US. If I sell in Germany, same thing. If I sell in China, same thing. And my generation didn't have to think that way, but the next generation is going to have to think that way.”
Immelt: GE's classic management toolkit was best suited for private equity
“You know, if you look at the basic GE toolkit that I grew up with, it was almost the perfect match for private equity where
You took a company, you had five years to turn it around. You didn't have to make big bets on products and technology. And so I think to…”
Immelt admits he helped cause GE's rock bottom during the 2008 crisis
“During the financial crisis, We were at rock bottom, and I helped cause that, and my board knew that, but my team was always with me.”
Immelt: Jack Welch was great for his era, but GE's environment changed
“Following a very successful leader, but tripping into a completely different time. So it wasn't that he was bad or good. He was great in the time that he lived in. But the time that I was leading the company was so dramatically different. It was more global. I…”
Immelt: Jack Welch managed large institutions better than anyone else
“What Jack did as a masterclass was how to lead at scale. He created an aura. He had a voice for 300,000 people. He had a voice for 500 people. He had a voice for 20 people. He had a voice for one person. He could change octaves in how he spoke. He knew how to …”
Immelt: GE struggled to survive 2008 without Paulson, Geithner, and Bernanke
“You know, everybody likes to dump on government, but, you know, Hank Paulson, Tim Geithner, Ben Bernanke, they did a great job. You know, I'd say without that kind of sure-handed leadership we would have had a real challenge to kind of making it through.”
Immelt: GE recruited Warren Buffett in 2008 for credibility, not cash
“I called Warren because he had done a similar deal with Goldman Sachs. Not so much that we needed his money, but we needed his seal of approval. And we added him to the raise and we were able to go out on Wednesday of that week and raise I think it was sixteen…”
Immelt: Listing 45 risk factors means a company effectively has none
“If you pick up a, an annual report for any company or a 10 K or 10 Q, they'll have 45 risk factors, right? If you have 45 risk factors, you really have none. I would much rather see a company list. Here are the three biggest risk factors and make the CEO, not …”
Immelt: CEOs who dismiss investors inevitably face activists and play defense
“Every time you say that, look, I don't care what the investors think, and then you don't own the company and an activist investor shows up, you end up backpedaling on all the things you said, like, I don't care what investors think. And you end up spending, yo…”
Immelt: Trump did not invent protectionism; it built over 15 years
“President Trump didn't invent protectionism. He kind of Americanized it, but anybody that didn't see that train coming for like 10 or 15 years was crazy.”
Immelt: Generalist managers struggle to succeed today without deep technical expertise
“And I think that there is a role for generalists, but it's harder to be successful in the world today, unless you're kind of deep domain, particularly technically”
Immelt: GE used financial services cash to fund industrial investments
“We're kind of using the financial service cash to help fund some of those things. You know, our investors really all they recognized was kind of like earnings per share growth. So, you know, we were doing it in a language that they understood.”
Immelt consulted Jack Welch on tough decisions despite public clashes
“Every time we had a very tough decision to make, I would always call him. Even after we'd had bad relations and bad words, when I had something really difficult that I wanted to think my way through, I would pick up the phone and call him and pick his brain.”
Immelt: In leadership, timing when to act is harder than execution
“Actually, knowing what to do isn't that hard. Knowing how to do it isn't that hard. Knowing when to do it is really hard.”
Immelt: Canceling meetings in a crisis induces panic across large companies
“The second you start canceling meetings, particularly in a big company, you worry 300,000 people. You say to them, man, we aren't, you know, we are really in trouble.”
Immelt: GE's biggest shareholder sold half their stake after 9/11
“After nine, 11, our biggest shareholders sold half their stake when the markets opened after nine, 11. And the reason they told me is they didn't realize how big we were in the insurance business.”
Immelt: Indecision is a worse failure mode than making wrong decisions
“I think in a crisis, maybe the time we live in today, maybe it's always been true, but I actually think it's a bigger mode of failure when people don't know, won't make a decision than when they make decisions and some of them are wrong. I weigh those two unev…”
Immelt: Amazon is complex but not complicated; Walmart is simple not simplistic
“There's a difference between being complex and being complicated. And there's a difference between being simple and simplistic. You know, I would say Amazon is complex, but it's not complicated. It's a software company, right? They have certain things they sta…”
Immelt redrew a struggling Canadian factory's org chart during a site visit
“I went chain to a factory in Peterborough in Canada one time where we made large motors, traction motors, and they were doing terribly. And I was traveling through Canada and I said, let's stop at Peterborough because they really are struggling. And I sat in a…”
Immelt: Top New York Fortune 500 CEOs held quarterly dinners on governance
“So there were five CEOs in the New York City area. It was me and Ken Chenault from American Express, Sam Palmisano, and then Jenny Romney from IBM, Steve Reimann, and then Indra Newey from Pepsi, and Bill Weldon, and then Alex Gorski from J&J. And we had dinne…”