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Factoid: Of the ten largest companies in America before the Great Depression, only GE was still in business after the Depression.


A quick google search tells me this is false. Everyone of of those companies was certainly in business after the depression, most are today

Company 1929 Revenues

Standard Oil (New Jersey) $1,523 (SO NJ > Exxon > merged with Mobil Oil to form ExxonMobil)

General Motors $1,504 (Reorganized in 2008, Still in Business)

Ford Motor $1,143 (Privately held until 50's Still in Business)

US Steel $1,097 (Still in Business)

Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea $1,054 (Out of Business 2015)

Swift & Co. $1,000 (Still in Business, Acquired by JBS SA in 2017 to form JBS USA)

Armour & Co. $1,000 (Bought by Greyhound in 1970, divested many ways, impractical to explain without a diagram - probably counts as out of business)

Standard Oil (Indiana) $495 (Amoco > Acquired by BP)

Sears, Roebuck $444 (Alive? maybe a zombie business)

General Electric $415


[Factoid] was coined in 1973 by American writer Norman Mailer to mean a piece of information that becomes accepted as a fact even though it is not actually true, or an invented fact believed to be true because it appears in print.[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factoid


I guess he used it correctly ;-)





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