Mass Layoffs by Profitable Firms a 'Horrible Act,' Diller Says

Layoffs, firings, and employee reductions when the numbers are still postive is another example the of the difference between Adam Smiths classical economics and Modern American Capitalism. Smith says that layoffs must be in response to actual events whereas American managers layoff on whims, guesses and other tea readings of their business. These managers have not been able to predict the economic future so far.......so a year from now they will probably be fighting over the best qualified new hire..........however in China many companies go broke at the very last minute........and everything goes at once usually with the Boss and Owners fleeing the country at the very very last moment.......many try to hold on as long as possible and puff......most everything they have worked for is gone down the drain........in America it is a very long drawn out end......like the final days of the American Auto Industry..........it just keeps fading away.......month after month and year after year!!!

Thank you Mr. Diller! It's refreshing to see someone speak the truth!

"Do businesses serve the greater good, or merely the bottom line?" The "greater good" isn't greater. It isn't even real. There is no such entity as "society" and no beneficiary for any "greater good." Should owners of businesses kneel down in sacrificial service to others? No. Every individual is an end in himself, not the means to "serving" others. Instead of reverting to the Sermon on the Mount, read Atlas Shrugged.

"Until Wall Street, investors and CEOs stop the myopic focus on quarterly results.." Excuse me, but this myopic focus is also about the only thing left that keeps companies in check. Even then they cheat. I hate to think what they will do without it.

The idea of a fat person, not a thin person, that's not, let's say, starvation-endangered, to just have just dietary cutbacks so they can save some extra food where no one's looking is really a horrible act when you think about it on every level. Won't someone think of the grocers!?

People are questioning their faith in the system? Would that be the same system that supplies them with giant flat screen TVs and oversized houses and SUVs? Knock it off with populism boys, a lot of people walked straight into this trap of their own free will.

the obsession with quarterly results win only change when the board and CEO and so forth are no longer compensated for goals and numbers tied to these quartely results. start tying compensation to longer term results, and these decisions will start looking a lot different. why not tie up a percentage of their pay or compensation in holding, and penalize/reward these men, based on longer term results. that certainly would have been nice to have whenever the crook of a CEO of Home Depot left, after destroying that company.

While layoffs are never a pretty thing, most companies wait until it's too late to make moves that will keep themselves healthy. In good time layoffs to improve bottom line numbers is reprehensible, but when we are facing economic doom and uncertainty like most of us have never seen or experienced in our life times, it's forward thinking and a proactive move to start to batten down the hatches before the storm hits, not as the ship is sinking from taking on water. In this situation I have to respectively disagree with Mr. Diller.

"I think if companies put the employee's 1st" what's happeneing to Ford, GM, and Chrysler? Didn't they do that and the employees are eating them alive from the inside with inflated salaries and retirement costs?

The truth is that the investors who create the companies and risk their money deserve a reasonable amount of return or else they do not fund these companies and those once successful companies become less successful. This is Economics 101, my friends. I know anger sells but layoffs are necessary to avoid losses. We are also in an economic slowdown. Why should employees be kept around if there is nothing for them to do? Even Honda who is very profitable is cutting employees because people aren't buying as many cars! Wake up people and let go of that anger...

alucart, is you tarded? "liquidating these malinvestments" You need a visit from a fairy with a pink slip - hit the bricks for a year, lose everything and hang a "malinvestment" banner around your neck while you collect coins on a freeway off-ramp.

Oh, good grief! Companies get fat during the boom part of the cycle, and the best possible effect of the recession part of the cycle is for healthy companies to adjust and continue strong enough to weather the next downturn, without going out of business. Unlike, for example, GM, which artificially maintains too many jobs at too high pay due to union extortion. The eventual result is everybody loses all the jobs. It's as natural a cycle as the one your trees and lawn follow. Anybody who doesn't expect the cycle to have both sides needs to fail in the downturns and turn management over to those who know what they are doing. Jobs depend on it. Making decisions for the short term, or for non-business reasons, only delays and worsens the eventual days of reckoning. The free enterprise theory (not a hypothesis) is that by making lots of economically sound small decisions, the individual companies contribute to overall economic health. We are not executing people we lay off. We are sending them to more secure jobs. Do you want a propped-up job, or a real job? Paul

It is only temporary........You will hve your job back.........3 months is the most but not longer than 6 months.......okay...........Economic recovery will took effect that time........sorry...........

How 'bout if you layoff, you don't get your bonus or parachute for the year? What's to stop Management? Bankrupcy also protects them!! Are we surprised workers have no voice? Do we want a society of all, or just a few???

It's really quite simple. So simple it's complicated for most to understand. Today's business is a reflection of our society, focused on greed and self-indulgence. After all, the very people making these business decisions are products of our society. Our culture as a whole in today's society has lost it's collective "soul", selling it to the "devil" for a quick buck. We are too lost in watching "Sex in the City", or "Desperate Horny Housewives" to do anything worthwhile in our free time anymore it seems. Do any of you remember when you actually used to know & take an active interest in your next door neighbor's welfare? Do you even know who lives in your neighborhood? Anytime we don't stand up & speak out for what we know and believe from the bottom of our very souls when we see abuses of the human spirit, to try to do something about it to make a difference in our very-short lifespans, we lose a little more of our "moral compass", slowly becoming like and molding to this lost culture's expectations of us. The qualities of self-sacrifice for others, kindness, humility, decency, honesty, integrity, chivalry, morality, are all lost to the previous generation. This may sound like a gross over-simplification of the problem, but one person can make a difference. Kindness can be contageous, words can be razor sharp, one word spoken to someone could make or break their day. You may not realize the effects you have on others around you until later in life, and regret something you said or did.

This is gold , if in the later 90's I’d have said two guys on a "main stream" "Stock market" media company will be looking toward China in a warm light and implying that the system they have developed is more socially Moral, my peers would have had me locked up, it's beautiful thing.

In a free market there can't be mass unemployment because there is always an infinite amount of work needing to be done. I blame the USSA government's restrictions on employment: things like minimum wage laws, immigration restrictions, union laws, and licensing laws. A lot of low-paying jobs would be available but for the minimum wage laws. And any socialists who think that hiring below the minimum wage would be "cruel" lack a basic understanding of economics 101 and can't see the additional employment and ensuing low prices that would help everyone, especially poor people.

As a former Yahoo as of today.I agree with Mr Diller.I was a member of the very profitable news group.Bain & Co came in made the cuts.After offering my supervisor a month ago to keep my job at half a salary and no benefits.My offer fell on deaf years.Bain & Co didnt look at performance.I traveled a third of the year for Yahoo.I thought I was a valued employeed.And much higher salaries are keeping their jobs.I'd like to throw a party with fellow exYahoo's when layoffs come to Bain & Co. Note nothing really said negative about Yahoo on the video along with this story...Yahoo produced...Duh!

Funny how history tends to repeat itself. The media and individuals in the U.S were talking about socialism and communism back in 1932 in the midst of the depression as well. The U.S did pretty good between then and now and here we are again talking about how socialism may be the answer while we have seen that communism and socialsm does not work. Pathetic!!!!!!!!!!!!

Capitalism in its entirity must be rethought. In fact, we need to abandon the "-isms." They are outdated & none were ever pure. We equated communism with totalitarianism & atheism... & yet the purest communism there ever was were Native American tribes, like the Iroquois Confederation, which was used as a model for our Constitution. Amongst these Native American tribes, there was little private ownership of material property. However, they were also pure democracies. The most totalitarian regimes were the Company Town of Appalachia & the Puritan villages. So let's get pragmatic & do away with "-isms." If the free market regains its footing & surges ahead again, then we are once more up against extreme commodity prices.... & Global Warming (something we face in any case). Therefore, we are damned if the economy suffers & damned if the economy once more booms. Capitalism works best on a small scale. It fails miserably on a large scale. Because manufacturing fled the US high wages, etc, we've tried to replace it with other illusionary booms.... which were bubble that simple fed off their own froth & were not really viable replacements. We cannot depend on having our food sources in China or Australia. We cannot only have autos made elsewhere. These are issues of national security just as much as energy, top secret software (China is now demanding encryption codes for all software & computers entering their country in the name of their own security) Where is that next great socio-economic idea that will allow for fairness, a sustainable, reasonable level of prosperity for all... but w/o the extreme damage to the planet & its other occupants, human, flora, & fauna alike?