Intrinsic Value Double

(1) General Electric plus ca change. (2) Rave book reviews (“must-read for American history buffs”) on "Ways and Means."

GE

That was fast.

On Nov. 9, General Electric announced a much-touted (by itself) plan to rescue shareholders by splitting the company into three parts. Since then, while the stock market has fallen a bit less than 7%, GE’s stock has plummeted 20%, mostly on account of disappointing earnings, supply-chain issues, and inflation.

Of course, when it comes to inflation, nothing tops the total compensation of $1.9 billion that GE delivered to its top five executives over two decades of abysmal failure, detailed here earlier in the month. Now that GE’s latest turnaround has hit a snag, do you think the CEO, Larry, Culp, whose latest disclosed annual compensation was $73 million, will be asked to give back some of the money? Not from the GE board. After 21 years of rewarding failure, why change now?

Ways and Means: Three Buy Signals

Intrinsic Value may appear with less frequency over the next few months, while I’m promoting my new book, Ways and Means: Lincoln and His Cabinet and the Financing of the Civil War.

The thumbnail sketch: Lincoln and his rivalrous Treasury Secretary, Salmon P. Chase, boldly used the emergency of the war to modernize the country’s finances and broaden the role of the federal government, the better to extend opportunity to ordinary Americans—the purpose for which Lincoln had entered politics. The South pursued an opposite philosophy of extreme anti-centralism. While the North encouraged industry, education and infrastructure, the Confederacy was built on a stagnant slave economy that distributed rewards only to those at the top and was unable to fund the war. Confederate soldiers fought doggedly, largely compensating for the North’s superior numbers; it was the Union’s superior economic scheme that proved decisive.

Advance reviews are strongly in the plus column. Publishers Weekly says, ”Ways and Means is [a] "Masterful history ... character-driven narrative ... fascinating ... a must-read for American history buffs.”

Kirkus says the author’s “experience writing about financial matters … informs this fresh look at the president’s essential Republican roots as a self-made man, rather than slaveholder, and belief that anyone could be successful in America.”

And Booklist adds: “Lowenstein delivers a fine account of a crucial yet overlooked aspect of the American Civil War.”

Ways and Means goes on sale Mar. 8; it’s available for preordering now.