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> I experienced the short-term thinking firsthand

I have too. The company stock tanked and the company disappeared. There's a word for short term companies - "bankrupt". Investors as group are simply not that stupid.

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You're talking to a group of people who think they know everything about anything from corporate finance to macro econ to philosophy. People here are generally technocrats with too little belief in others ability and too much belief in their own.

I just try to point out the obvious :-)

From my point of view, if a person was right that X Corp was sacrificing the long term for short term profits, and that nobody else has cottoned on to it, they would be making a fortune shorting the stock.

I.e. if they were so sure they were right, they'd be willing to put money on it.

As for me, as mentioned before, I put my money where my theories are. I'm a long term investor (riding the booms and busts up and down) and have done satisfyingly well for it. I've had my failures, too, riding Enron right down to zero :-) but overall it's been good.

Technocrats will almost always blame their failures on the irrationality of everybody else.

That, or maybe some of these people held senior managerial positions and ran their companies and know what they are talking about.

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