ViaMJP
Sears Holdings shares the stated goal of many public officials of creating jobs. But, we don't believe that we need large government programs to generate these jobs. Public officials often fail to recognize the obstacles they place in the way of job creation. For example, over the past year proposal after proposal has been put forward to reform health care, reform the financial system, increase taxes, and add regulations, all with the intention of making the United States a better and stronger country.
Yet, as a business, trying to understand which of these proposals might become law, what their impact might be on business prospects and competition, and what additional costs they might impose creates a great deal of uncertainty. It has led our management team and board (and I am sure those managements and boards of other companies) to spend inordinate time trying to determine which investments we should make, defer, or cancel and which jobs to create, maintain, or eliminate. The removal of this uncertainty and the constant drumbeat of new threats against various businesses would go a long way to allowing American entrepreneurial energy to be unleashed.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
The Chairman of Sears on Washington D.C. Created Uncertainty
Eddie Lampert writes:
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I saw this at Toyota during the Cash-for-Clunkers thing. Figuring out how many of the company's models were eligible and how to best take advantage of the handout became the number one focus at HQ for weeks after the program was announced and while it ran. It was extremely short-sighted in terms of business strategy but I think it was what the mgmt felt was the best they could do given the increasingly uncertain business and regulatory climate, whereas the C4C handouts were "guaranteed" money if you could find a way to capture them.
ReplyDeleteNot bashing Toyota here, just using this as an anecdote to affirm Lampert's observations.