The Speculation Economy

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PROLOGUE

Arecent survey of more than four hundred chief financial officers of major American corporations revealed that almost 80 percent of them would have at least moderately mutilated their businesses in order to meet analysts’ quarterly profit estimates. Cutting the budgets for research and development, advertising and maintenance and delaying hiring and new projects are some of the long-term harms they would readily inflict on their corporations. Why? Because in modern American corporate capitalism the failure to meet quarterly numbers ...