Trump and Fiorina’s Snake Oil Sales – Joe Nocera, The New York Times

“Business wonk that I am, my favorite moment in last week’s Republican debate came when Carly Fiorina and Donald Trump got into a spat over which of them had the lousier track record as business leaders. “The company is a disaster,” scoffed Trump, referring to Hewlett-Packard, the iconic technology company Fiorina ran from 1999 to 2005. Trump continued: “When Carly says the revenues went up that’s because she bought Compaq. It was a terrible deal, and it really led to the destruction of the company.” Fiorina responded by focusing on how Trump ran his three Atlantic City casinos into the ground. “You ran up mountains of debt, as well as losses,” she said, “using other people’s money, and you were forced to file for bankruptcy not once, not twice [but] four times, a record four times.” They’re both right. Fiorina’s tenure at HP was indeed a disaster, and Trump’s casino interests did indeed file for bankruptcy multiple times. Now that Trump and Fiorina are number one and number two in a recent poll — oy! — it’s worth taking a closer look at their business records.”

Source: Trump and Fiorina’s Snake Oil Sales – The New York Times

Carly Fiorina’s Revisionist Chronicles – Joe Nocera, NYTimes.com reduces Fiorina down to midget size

Joe Nocera, in 2006:

“The earnings numbers, though, tell only part of the story. “From the time she came to the time she left,” said Benjamin Rosen, the former venture capitalist and Compaq chairman, “based on the organization she built, the performance of the company, and the return to shareholders, it was not a good report card.”

The stock declined 50 percent during the five and a half years she was in charge. Although she said she was making employees accountable, she put in place an organizational chart with so many overlapping responsibilities that nobody seemed to be in charge. She larded the place with bureaucracy. She merged the highly profitable printer division with the struggling personal computer division, another questionable move.”

“But even putting that aside, look at how she carried it out. Michael D. Capellas, the chief executive of Compaq, was supposed to be her No. 2. There are many people on Wall Street who say that he was the one who really sold the merger to the Street — and, because of his operational background, gave investors confidence that it might work. But Ms. Fiorina never had much use for him, and he left within six months. In her book, she belittles him at every turn. She also took over his job as company president and head of operations, a role for which she was completely unfit. Her entire career had been spent in marketing and sales. Nor did she do much to keep other top Compaq managers. In short order, almost all of them left — and almost all of them landed big jobs with important technology companies. Most of them had skills she lacked — but she neither understood that, nor cared.”

Source: Carly Fiorina’s Revisionist Chronicles – NYTimes.com

Don’t Coronate Carly Fiorina Just Yet – Charles blow, The New York Times, draws blood from a vampire.

“As Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall put it Friday: “Fiorina has a habit of simply making things up.” But in a way, the veracity of the attack is only one of the problems here. The other is that Fiorina would deny reproductive health services to women who have vastly fewer resources, or choices, than she does. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Advertisement Continue reading the main story Adele M. Stan on Thursday captured Fiorina perfectly in a blistering assessment in The American Prospect. “The evil genius of Fiorina,” Stan wrote, “is her uncanny ability to play the gender warrior within the GOP while promoting the party’s misogyny.” Stan continued: “But her feminism seems to begin and end with the fortunes of Fiorina herself, and seeing as she probably doesn’t rely on Planned Parenthood for her health care, she’s happy to deprive millions of women of that care by promoting outright lies about the organization, as in her false description of the video she referenced.” ”

Source: Don’t Coronate Carly Fiorina Just Yet – The New York Times