GE AAA

Read a long article in the Journal this weekend about GE and its collapse from being one of the biggest companies in America to its ignominious position today. The long and short of it is very similar to the story at AIG: a rapid climb under a legendary CEO, leveraging a AAA credit rating to expand into too many lines of business, the inability of a successor to find a way forward. As a personal story, admittedly, in many ways Jeff Immelt is more like Steve Balmer of Microsoft -- an underachiever who diddled his way to mediocrity, than Martin Sullivan was at AIG -- a catastrophe. Presumably that's because Jack Welch was less of a control freak than Hank Greenberg was at AIG, and developed stronger lieutenants.

But the use of the AAA credit rating as a way to finance whatever rhymes convincingly with AIG's experience. Admittedly, GE went much crazier than did AIG in terms of getting into everything but the kitchen sink (though they probably did make those).

More than anything, it makes me wonder -- along with the entire investing world -- about succession at Berkshire Hathaway. Buffett has discussed it for years somewhat openly, and we know that the culture of the "organization", if one can even speak of such a unitary thing in Berkshire's case, is as distributed as it can be. But is it held together by nothing other than pixie dust, Cherry Coke and the credit rating? Time will tell.