Whats the downside of the public company experience these days?
The pendulum [on regulation] has gone too far one way and needs to come back some. My job is to play by the rules of the day. I tell people in GE, “You’re not allowed to complain about the referee, at least not in public.” We keep our mouths shut and just keep going. But money flows are just not coming to the New York Stock Exchange. You can say what you want about the GE stock, but the S&P 500 is lower today than it was in 2000. That’s not good. Companies’ earnings have doubled, tripled, or quadrupled. Money flows to the NYSE have a lot to do with how people view the U.S. economy. The U.S. economy over the past few years has been, in many ways, better than in the late 1990s. It’s more sustainable. Even though interest rates will go up, I still think the economy is pretty gosh darn good. GE is half outside the U.S., and that’s growing twice as fast as our business in the U.S. This is going to be a profoundly global company. One of the things you never delegate is a feeling about a regi
