Back in the early 80’s I was an intern at a large German vehicle manufacturer (think Beasty Boys and you’ll probably guess which one) while there I attended a share holders meeting and noticed all the graphs in the share holders report went neatly up from left to right production, productivity employment, and so on and so forth every representation of statistics seemed to show healthy steady growth.

Then I read the dates on the x axis of the said graphs and they all read from 1982 on the left to 1975 on the right, in other words the graphs all showed a steady unhealthy decline of production and employment.

Most of the companies private share holders were pensioners who had worked their entire lives at the company and were too busy stuffing carrier bags with sausages and bread rolls that were freely available too even notice.