[hristov]

And to be clear he was absolutely lying about that. Immelt was certainly a problematic leader, but a lot of the problems with GE happened under Welch. The biggest issue with GE was massive insurance liabilities for assisted living insurance which drastically exceeded anything GE predicted.

Well Welch started the insurance business in GE and took on a lot of these liabilities.

And while Immelt certainly had his problems, his mistakes were basically in the fact that he continued the Welch strategy rather than make new types of mistakes.

[PaulHoule]

I remember people like Suze Orman were always handwringing since the 1990s about "Why doesn't the market take off in long-term care insurance?"

The obvious answer is that it doesn't work. One is that inevitably you get done in by cost disease, the other is that LTC insurance has a narrow market of people that can afford it but are not rich enough that they don't need it.

[Spooky23]

It is a deeper problem than that. Why buy insurance when you can create a trust to hide your assets and have the taxpayer pay? (Once you’re broke, you go on Medicaid)

There’s no nice nursing home or homecare. You just need enough money to get in, and the provider can’t kick you out. If you have a good support network, the only “enhanced” level of care is hiring people off the books with cash.

[rumanator]

> And to be clear he was absolutely lying about that.

So his legacy is not only a management style that imploded and dismantled a collosal corporation but also him being the kind of person that throws people under the bus, including his closest associates and hand-picked successors.

[devonkim]

Furthermore, people asked Jack Welch about the GE Capital spin-off and he said he agreed it was the right decision for the business. So I find it contradictory how Welch could feel bad while agreeing with major strategic decisions. Was it an execution problem? Because no amount of execution would have saved GE Capital given all the scathing criticisms I read. The entire financial sector became hazardous waste during the financial crisis, so unless GE Capital was as strong as a top tier Wall St bank it wasn't about to survive I'd imagine.