How America's Richest Industrial Empire Went Completely Broke: General Electric

General Electric was once the most valuable company on earth — worth nearly $600 billion at its peak, a founding member of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and the employer of tens of thousands of American workers in Schenectady, New York, a city that called itself the Electric City because of GE. Thomas Edison helped create it. J.P. Morgan financed it. Jack Welch turned it into a Wall Street juggernaut by transforming GE Capital from a small appliance-financing arm into one of the largest financial institutions in the country. Then the financial crisis of 2008 revealed what GE had actually become — an unregulated bank masquerading as an industrial conglomerate. Jeff Immelt's $10.6 billion Alstom acquisition, a $15 billion insurance reserve shortfall, a $22 billion write-down on the power division, an SEC investigation, a dividend cut to one penny, removal from the Dow after more than a century, and a stock price collapse of roughly ninety percent. In 2024, the company was broken into three pieces. General Electric no longer exists. Sources "What the Hell Happened at GE?" — Geoff Colvin, Fortune, May 24, 2018 "How Decades of Bad Decisions Broke GE" — Matt Egan, CNN Business, November 20, 2017 "GE Misled Investors Before Its Stock Imploded, SEC Says" — Matt Egan, CNN Business, December 10, 2020 "GE, a Shadow of Its Former Self in Schenectady" — Paul Nelson, Daily Gazette, November 10, 2021 "Downsizing of GE Workforce Was Painful Period" — Paul Nelson, Daily Gazette, September 24, 2017 SEC Administrative Proceeding File No. 3-20166, In the Matter of General Electric Company, December 9, 2020