The amount of effusive hagiography devoted to Welch in the late 1990s and early 2000s was stupefying.
I grew up in a "GE town" and watched it fall into severe neglect as GE's stock price rose. Watched my mother get laid off and pushed into a service company that she and many others referred to as "the bastard child of GE."
I always felt that there was a lot of smoke-and-mirrors behind Welch & the stock price. And I felt that Welch would depart before the check came due. Immelt got hammered, in part, because of Jack's sins--I don't know if Immelt deserved it because I stopped paying attention to GE in the early 2000s.
My opinion of GE was / is not based on some detailed and thorough analysis. It came from observing the disconnect between what happened to my hometown and the stock price.