Re: The Strike At GM: Causes and Consequences
A reader writes:
> .... I would appreciate a little bit of context setting before
> launching into your articles. I for one, did not see the Nightline
> story on the recent GM strike. It can be a little hard to follow why
> you start in with:
> "One guest, film maker [Michael] Moore, made the case that GM was to blame."
> Blame for what? The strike, supposedly, or perhaps I am guessing wrong.
> Perhaps there was picket line violence and that GM was to blame.
I left it abstract intentionally. Mr. Moore is not a scholar or journalist.
He is an advocate, and what he advocates is "blame" for the sake of making problems intractable rather than solvable. But, I did not want to seem to be accusing Koppel of complicity in this. I don't think he realized in advance of the show how weak a guest Mateja (who was there to supply objectivity) would be.
> There have been other newsletters that start in on issues that have
> been on your mind. But since they might not have been issues I had
> encountered yet, or in as much detail, a little more background would
> be appreciated. Generally, the tone of the newsletter sounds like
> you have been mulling over some issues and then you type out some notes
> to yourself. Trouble is, sometimes the notes sound exactly like they are
> directed at someone that works closely with you, or even yourself, to
> help
> clarify or record your thinking, than they are for an uninitiated
> audience.
You are perceptive. Many people have asked why I write a free newsletter. Part of the answer is: precisely because it helps me clarify certain ideas for myself.
In this case, I did include the URL of the Nightline episode (http://www.abcnews.com/onair/nightline/transcripts/ntl_980625_trans.html), though I now regret not explicitly labelling it as such.
What you have not read are the many editions of GADR that were never completed -- in large part because so much context was supplied that the article became unmanageable. Given the scope of the subject matter, that could easily have been the fate of the letter to Mr. Koppel.
By the way, this is also a problem with even Graham's most widely read book, The Intelligent Investor. It's not an entry level work. It begins by conceding that it presumes the reader's knowledge of basic investment terms -- but, in fact, it actually presumes that the reader has done a certain amount of thinking about these issues already.
Reynolds Russell |
