1 00:00:06,049 --> 00:00:07,133 [bell rings] 2 00:00:07,216 --> 00:00:08,843 I've always wondered myself, 3 00:00:08,926 --> 00:00:12,638 why do we have to hear this every night, what the stock market is doing. 4 00:00:12,722 --> 00:00:14,724 Seventy record closing highs so far... 5 00:00:15,516 --> 00:00:16,768 [woman] Blasting through a ceiling... 6 00:00:16,851 --> 00:00:18,853 In a record-setting IPO. 7 00:00:18,936 --> 00:00:20,146 Investors who have been riding the wave... 8 00:00:20,772 --> 00:00:22,398 [narrator] When the stock market is booming, 9 00:00:22,482 --> 00:00:25,151 we're made to believe the economy is booming. 10 00:00:25,651 --> 00:00:30,198 And in America, the stock market has been mostly booming for almost 40 years, 11 00:00:30,281 --> 00:00:32,408 [man] As the stock market goes, so goes the wealth 12 00:00:32,492 --> 00:00:34,327 and the health of the American economy. 13 00:00:34,410 --> 00:00:38,206 What the market is telling us is that we are on the road to prosperity. 14 00:00:38,289 --> 00:00:41,834 ...a sky-rocketing stock market, and that benefits everyone. 15 00:00:41,918 --> 00:00:45,296 The stock market has gained almost three trillion dollars in value 16 00:00:45,379 --> 00:00:46,506 since the election. 17 00:00:47,048 --> 00:00:51,010 [narrator] But if you add up all the goods and services bought and sold in the US, 18 00:00:51,094 --> 00:00:56,140 the actual economy, that number isn't growing as quickly as it used to. 19 00:00:56,224 --> 00:00:58,643 Wages have hardly budged in decades 20 00:00:58,726 --> 00:01:01,395 and the average American family's net worth 21 00:01:01,479 --> 00:01:04,107 still hasn't recovered from the Great Recession. 22 00:01:04,190 --> 00:01:07,401 So what exactly is the stock market measuring? 23 00:01:09,278 --> 00:01:12,490 [man] The barometer of America's prosperity has been the stock exchange. 24 00:01:12,573 --> 00:01:14,200 Look at the Dow, it's currently up by... 25 00:01:14,283 --> 00:01:16,160 The NASDAQ finally hit 5,000. 26 00:01:16,244 --> 00:01:17,870 Investors are salivating... 27 00:01:17,954 --> 00:01:21,290 -Dividends! -[man] A new kind of gold rush... 28 00:01:22,041 --> 00:01:24,877 We are all watching this global economic expansion... 29 00:01:24,961 --> 00:01:26,504 We are now in historic territory... 30 00:01:26,587 --> 00:01:27,755 A stock buy-back... 31 00:01:27,839 --> 00:01:31,175 [woman] It's a fundamentally psychopathic philosophy. 32 00:01:32,176 --> 00:01:34,178 [crowd applauding] 33 00:01:40,351 --> 00:01:42,603 [narrator] To understand what the stock markets are measuring, 34 00:01:42,687 --> 00:01:46,524 it helps to imagine a very simple business like a lemonade stand. 35 00:01:46,607 --> 00:01:50,278 -Jill is killing it. -[Jill] But I'm thinking bigger. 36 00:01:50,862 --> 00:01:53,781 I tried to get a loan, but the bank said it was too risky. 37 00:01:54,198 --> 00:01:56,242 The rich investors weren't buying. 38 00:01:57,034 --> 00:01:58,369 [narrator] Jill has another option. 39 00:01:58,452 --> 00:02:02,081 She can go public, giving anyone who wants to, 40 00:02:02,165 --> 00:02:04,041 -the chance to invest in her business... -[clamoring] 41 00:02:04,125 --> 00:02:07,753 ...through something called an initial public offering or IPO. 42 00:02:07,837 --> 00:02:11,090 Investors pay a certain amount, say a dollar, to own a small part 43 00:02:11,174 --> 00:02:12,717 or share of Jill's business. 44 00:02:13,342 --> 00:02:15,136 Jill sells a bunch of shares. 45 00:02:15,678 --> 00:02:17,889 [Jill] And I grow my lemonade empire! 46 00:02:17,972 --> 00:02:21,809 [narrator] Right, Jill can put that money towards opening new lemonade stands, 47 00:02:21,893 --> 00:02:24,145 which means more profits. 48 00:02:24,228 --> 00:02:27,398 Jill can put some of those profits towards developing new products. 49 00:02:27,481 --> 00:02:30,776 She can also give some of that money back to her investors. 50 00:02:30,860 --> 00:02:32,320 These are called dividends. 51 00:02:32,403 --> 00:02:36,324 She doesn't have to do this, but it does help get people excited 52 00:02:36,407 --> 00:02:39,702 about her company and more likely to buy her stock, 53 00:02:39,785 --> 00:02:43,664 like Sam. He was sick on IPO day, but he thinks... 54 00:02:43,748 --> 00:02:46,542 [Sam] Jill is the smartest girl in the whole world, 55 00:02:46,626 --> 00:02:50,338 and I know this lemonade stand thing is gonna be huge. 56 00:02:50,421 --> 00:02:54,717 [narrator] So he offers to buy some shares from one of the original investors 57 00:02:54,800 --> 00:02:56,552 for twice what she paid for them. 58 00:02:56,636 --> 00:02:58,012 He's thinking... 59 00:03:01,307 --> 00:03:02,975 [narrator] That's the stock market. 60 00:03:03,059 --> 00:03:05,728 It's people buying and selling tiny pieces of companies, 61 00:03:05,811 --> 00:03:09,232 based on how much they think those pieces will be worth in the future. 62 00:03:09,774 --> 00:03:11,025 Except in real life, 63 00:03:11,108 --> 00:03:14,403 it's happening thousands of times a second, all over the world. 64 00:03:14,987 --> 00:03:16,530 There are stock markets everywhere, 65 00:03:16,614 --> 00:03:19,825 but the New York Stock Exchange is the big kahuna. 66 00:03:19,909 --> 00:03:21,786 It's been around since 1792, 67 00:03:21,869 --> 00:03:25,790 when 24 stockbrokers put on their finest short pants and top hats 68 00:03:25,873 --> 00:03:29,377 and got together under a buttonwood tree on Wall Street in New York City. 69 00:03:29,460 --> 00:03:32,713 Today, it's where shares in big traditional companies like IBM 70 00:03:32,797 --> 00:03:34,548 and GE are traded. 71 00:03:34,632 --> 00:03:37,051 The NASDAQ is the cooler younger brother. 72 00:03:37,176 --> 00:03:40,721 It was born in 1971 and doesn't have a physical location. 73 00:03:40,805 --> 00:03:42,807 All the trading happens electronically. 74 00:03:42,890 --> 00:03:45,935 That's where you find tech companies like Apple and Facebook. 75 00:03:46,686 --> 00:03:49,814 So, in America if you want to know how the stock market is doing, 76 00:03:49,897 --> 00:03:52,650 you want to know how both these exchanges are doing. 77 00:03:52,733 --> 00:03:54,902 That's where indexes come in. 78 00:03:54,986 --> 00:03:59,824 They take a whole bunch of share prices and transform them into one clean number. 79 00:03:59,907 --> 00:04:01,784 The S&P 500 tracks 500 80 00:04:01,867 --> 00:04:04,537 of the largest companies on both exchanges, 81 00:04:04,620 --> 00:04:06,706 While the Dow is a lot more exclusive. 82 00:04:06,789 --> 00:04:10,418 It only follows the 30 companies it considers the most important. 83 00:04:10,501 --> 00:04:14,839 In 2015, it booted out AT&T and replaced it with Apple. 84 00:04:14,922 --> 00:04:19,969 The Dow and S&P are big American indexes, but other countries have their own indexes 85 00:04:20,052 --> 00:04:21,595 to measure their stock markets. 86 00:04:21,679 --> 00:04:23,014 The German stock index, Dax... 87 00:04:23,097 --> 00:04:25,141 [woman] London's FTSE 100 index... 88 00:04:25,224 --> 00:04:26,600 The Nikkei index... 89 00:04:26,684 --> 00:04:28,227 [woman] The Shanghai index... 90 00:04:28,311 --> 00:04:31,772 [narrator] Today, many of the world's biggest companies are publicly traded, 91 00:04:32,064 --> 00:04:33,983 but that wasn't always the case. 92 00:04:34,358 --> 00:04:38,904 One guy, and it was almost always a guy, used to call all the shots. 93 00:04:38,988 --> 00:04:43,326 Big corporations of the 1900s, most of them at that time 94 00:04:43,409 --> 00:04:46,078 had a single shareholder like Andrew Carnegie, 95 00:04:48,289 --> 00:04:49,415 Vanderbilt. Rockefeller. 96 00:04:56,172 --> 00:04:59,675 They really exercised very tight control over these businesses. 97 00:04:59,759 --> 00:05:04,096 This all began to change in the beginning of the 20th century. 98 00:05:04,180 --> 00:05:08,267 We start to see the rise of companies like General Motors 99 00:05:08,351 --> 00:05:10,728 and General Electric and RCA. 100 00:05:10,811 --> 00:05:13,230 [narrator] Companies discovered what Jill discovered, 101 00:05:13,314 --> 00:05:18,027 that if you allow the public to buy shares, you can grow a lot faster. 102 00:05:18,110 --> 00:05:20,196 Shareholders want to make money. 103 00:05:20,279 --> 00:05:22,907 So if the CEO makes a really bad decision, 104 00:05:22,990 --> 00:05:26,619 they'll start selling their shares, which will drive the price down. 105 00:05:26,702 --> 00:05:29,914 The opposite is also true. The possibility of a future payout 106 00:05:30,414 --> 00:05:33,209 encourages people to invest in risky new ideas. 107 00:05:33,292 --> 00:05:35,920 That's the whole idea of the stock market as a force for good. 108 00:05:36,003 --> 00:05:38,297 It drives companies to make good decisions, 109 00:05:38,381 --> 00:05:41,175 so they have more money to give back to shareholders 110 00:05:41,258 --> 00:05:45,596 and more money to grow and create jobs, and that's good for everybody. 111 00:05:45,679 --> 00:05:50,684 By the middle of the 20th century, the American public corporation 112 00:05:50,935 --> 00:05:55,189 was proving itself one of the most effective and powerful 113 00:05:55,272 --> 00:05:58,192 and beneficial organizations in the world. 114 00:05:58,275 --> 00:06:00,694 [man] There's a sense of growing prosperity, 115 00:06:00,778 --> 00:06:04,073 and the telephone company is a grateful participant. 116 00:06:04,156 --> 00:06:08,160 [narrator] Decades after World War II, the stock market helped create the heyday 117 00:06:08,244 --> 00:06:09,829 of shared American prosperity. 118 00:06:09,912 --> 00:06:12,748 [man] A new era begins, make the system more democratic, 119 00:06:12,832 --> 00:06:15,501 increase the flow of capital for the financing of business. 120 00:06:15,584 --> 00:06:19,922 The corporation really was supposed to be a vehicle 121 00:06:20,005 --> 00:06:24,385 for providing investment opportunities, not just to the very, very wealthy, 122 00:06:24,468 --> 00:06:25,803 but to average Americans. 123 00:06:25,886 --> 00:06:29,432 It's generating superior returns for investors. 124 00:06:29,515 --> 00:06:31,058 Don't you think we ought to invest, honey? 125 00:06:31,142 --> 00:06:34,103 [Stout] Millions of secure, well-paid jobs. 126 00:06:34,186 --> 00:06:38,649 It's producing innovative products that are bought around the globe. 127 00:06:38,732 --> 00:06:43,821 Executives and directors viewed themselves as stewards or trustees 128 00:06:43,904 --> 00:06:47,408 of great public institutions that were supposed to serve, 129 00:06:47,491 --> 00:06:50,911 not just shareholders, but also bondholders, 130 00:06:50,995 --> 00:06:55,291 suppliers, employees, the community. 131 00:06:55,374 --> 00:06:58,961 [man] Buick has provided a stomping ground for the cowboy and diaper scent. 132 00:06:59,587 --> 00:07:02,548 And Buick's general manager, Ivan Wiles, drops in. 133 00:07:02,631 --> 00:07:03,757 [man 2] The Du Pont company... 134 00:07:03,841 --> 00:07:07,219 Modern chemistry and modern industry join hands 135 00:07:07,303 --> 00:07:09,972 in serving our modern America. 136 00:07:10,055 --> 00:07:14,018 [narrator] These public corporations helped build the American middle class, 137 00:07:14,101 --> 00:07:16,395 and for people who knew how to play it right, 138 00:07:16,479 --> 00:07:18,772 trading their stocks could build a fortune. 139 00:07:18,939 --> 00:07:20,107 Like this guy. 140 00:07:20,191 --> 00:07:22,693 ♪ I've been working on the railroad... ♪ 141 00:07:22,776 --> 00:07:26,113 [narrator] Folk music is just his hobby. Mostly, he's the billionaire investor... 142 00:07:26,197 --> 00:07:27,239 [both] Warren Buffett... 143 00:07:27,323 --> 00:07:29,325 The biggest Wall Street titan of them all. 144 00:07:29,408 --> 00:07:30,576 America's most famous investor. 145 00:07:30,659 --> 00:07:33,078 [woman] Investor Warren Buffett is worth 84 billion. 146 00:07:33,162 --> 00:07:36,582 [narrator] Buffett is famous for a particular investment style. 147 00:07:36,665 --> 00:07:40,377 Value investing, careful analysis of a company, 148 00:07:40,461 --> 00:07:43,756 looking at their balance sheet, looking at their business. 149 00:07:43,839 --> 00:07:45,466 [narrator] But if you don't have time to do that, 150 00:07:45,549 --> 00:07:47,718 here's a tip from the man himself. 151 00:07:47,801 --> 00:07:52,014 Buy an S&P 500 low-cost index fund. 152 00:07:52,097 --> 00:07:54,475 [narrator] An index fund puts a little bit of your money 153 00:07:54,558 --> 00:07:56,268 in all companies in the index. 154 00:07:56,352 --> 00:07:59,647 Basically, you're hitching your wagon to the stock market. 155 00:07:59,772 --> 00:08:03,317 The other option is to give your money to professional investors, 156 00:08:03,400 --> 00:08:06,695 who for a fee, try to beat the stock market. 157 00:08:06,779 --> 00:08:10,032 Buffett once bet a hedge fund a million dollars that over ten years, 158 00:08:10,115 --> 00:08:13,744 an index fund would make more money, and he won. 159 00:08:13,827 --> 00:08:17,873 Picking stocks is a hard game but there's one popular strategy. 160 00:08:17,957 --> 00:08:19,959 This guy, John Maynard Keynes. 161 00:08:20,042 --> 00:08:22,336 You can remember him by his epic mustache. 162 00:08:22,419 --> 00:08:25,256 He came up with it. Keynes was a Nobel Prize winner 163 00:08:25,339 --> 00:08:29,093 and one of the most influential economists of the 20th century, 164 00:08:29,176 --> 00:08:31,720 and he noticed that newspapers would do this thing. 165 00:08:31,804 --> 00:08:35,349 [Robert Shiller] They would have a full page of the newspaper dedicated 166 00:08:35,432 --> 00:08:37,685 to photos of pretty faces, 167 00:08:37,768 --> 00:08:41,105 and you were supposed to pick the six prettiest faces 168 00:08:41,188 --> 00:08:45,943 and mark them down in rank order and mail them in to the newspaper. 169 00:08:46,026 --> 00:08:49,947 [narrator] The newspaper would rank faces based on how many votes they got, 170 00:08:50,030 --> 00:08:53,617 and the winner was the person whose choices matched the crowd's. 171 00:08:53,701 --> 00:08:55,286 [Shiller] Let's think about that contest. 172 00:08:55,744 --> 00:08:59,373 Do I really just pick what seem to me the prettiest faces? 173 00:08:59,456 --> 00:09:03,419 No, I should pick what other people think are the prettiest faces. 174 00:09:03,502 --> 00:09:05,588 That's kind of what happens in the stock market. 175 00:09:06,005 --> 00:09:09,883 [narrator] It's not the real value of companies that drive their stock prices. 176 00:09:09,967 --> 00:09:14,096 It's the most popular story people believe about those companies. 177 00:09:14,513 --> 00:09:17,349 Sometimes those stories are backed up by facts. 178 00:09:17,433 --> 00:09:20,686 [man] Chipotle stock has plunged more than a third. 179 00:09:20,769 --> 00:09:24,398 This comes after several outbreaks, including E. coli, salmonella 180 00:09:24,481 --> 00:09:26,400 and norovirus were linked to the chain. 181 00:09:26,483 --> 00:09:31,238 An emissions scandal rocking Volkswagen is sending its stock into a free fall. 182 00:09:31,322 --> 00:09:33,449 [narrator] But sometimes those stories are all hype. 183 00:09:33,532 --> 00:09:37,077 [man] Internet companies are the hottest and most profitable investments 184 00:09:37,161 --> 00:09:38,329 -in a generation. -[shouting] 185 00:09:38,412 --> 00:09:41,081 They've driven the value into the stratosphere. 186 00:09:41,206 --> 00:09:43,292 Lycos, Excite, Yahoo... 187 00:09:43,375 --> 00:09:46,128 Those internet stocks continue their meteoric rise. 188 00:09:46,211 --> 00:09:48,547 The narrative in the 1990's was 189 00:09:48,631 --> 00:09:50,799 internet companies are going to dominate. 190 00:09:50,883 --> 00:09:53,344 These companies shouldn't be trying to make profits. 191 00:09:53,427 --> 00:09:55,471 That's a good story, which is partly right. 192 00:09:55,554 --> 00:09:58,223 We do have companies like Amazon, Google. 193 00:09:58,307 --> 00:10:02,144 The problem is that nobody had any way to calibrate this story. 194 00:10:02,227 --> 00:10:03,729 How high should the market be? 195 00:10:03,812 --> 00:10:05,356 Is it a boom without end? 196 00:10:05,439 --> 00:10:07,650 [man] Has the economy changed for good? 197 00:10:07,733 --> 00:10:10,569 You know something's wrong when everyone's talking about 198 00:10:10,653 --> 00:10:13,864 something like this. It's a bubble, it's like a snowballing effect. 199 00:10:13,947 --> 00:10:17,701 It keeps getting higher and higher. It can't go on forever. 200 00:10:17,785 --> 00:10:21,288 The Dot Com Honeymoon is coming to a close in many parts of the world. 201 00:10:21,372 --> 00:10:23,749 Many dot coms have become dot bombs. 202 00:10:23,832 --> 00:10:26,210 [man] 300,000 tech jobs are now gone. [man 2] It's described as nothing short of breathtaking. 203 00:10:28,754 --> 00:10:31,507 A points drop never before seen on the US market. 204 00:10:31,590 --> 00:10:34,301 It left traders and investors shell-shocked. 205 00:10:34,385 --> 00:10:36,303 [narrator] When stock market bubbles burst, 206 00:10:36,387 --> 00:10:39,932 it doesn't just hurt investors, it wreaks havoc on the whole economy. 207 00:10:40,015 --> 00:10:42,976 Millions of people can lose their jobs, companies go under, 208 00:10:43,060 --> 00:10:44,895 and pensions get pummeled. 209 00:10:44,978 --> 00:10:48,774 But even when the stock market is up and investors are making money, 210 00:10:48,857 --> 00:10:50,359 that can hurt the economy, too. 211 00:10:50,442 --> 00:10:53,862 We are heading towards the most acute shortages of energy 212 00:10:53,946 --> 00:10:55,406 since World War II. 213 00:10:55,489 --> 00:10:59,034 [man] Motorists began lining up before dawn in hopes of getting enough gasoline 214 00:10:59,118 --> 00:11:00,244 to take them through the day. 215 00:11:00,327 --> 00:11:02,413 [man 2] Are you mad about the way prices have risen? 216 00:11:02,496 --> 00:11:05,040 I am thoroughly discouraged and disgusted with the whole thing. 217 00:11:05,124 --> 00:11:08,919 [Stout] There was a general sense of concern that something had gone wrong 218 00:11:09,002 --> 00:11:10,587 in the American economy. 219 00:11:10,671 --> 00:11:16,135 And eventually, the finger got pointed at the way our large public corporations 220 00:11:16,218 --> 00:11:17,845 were operating and being run. 221 00:11:17,928 --> 00:11:21,014 [narrator] Meet the chief finger pointer-- Milton Friedman. 222 00:11:21,098 --> 00:11:23,976 An economist so famous, he was invited onto popular talk shows 223 00:11:24,101 --> 00:11:25,894 to help explain his philosophy. 224 00:11:25,978 --> 00:11:29,606 Did you ever have a moment of doubt about capitalism? 225 00:11:29,690 --> 00:11:32,067 And whether greed's a good idea to run on? 226 00:11:32,151 --> 00:11:35,696 Tell me, is there some society you know that doesn't run on greed? 227 00:11:35,779 --> 00:11:38,031 [narrator] Remember the wheel? Friedman was not a fan. 228 00:11:38,157 --> 00:11:41,952 He thought it should have exactly one spoke, shareholders. 229 00:11:42,035 --> 00:11:45,456 In 1970, he published a blockbuster op-ed. 230 00:11:45,539 --> 00:11:48,667 [Stout] The famous editorial that ran in The New York Times, 231 00:11:48,751 --> 00:11:54,673 in which he said that because corporations were owned by their shareholders, 232 00:11:54,757 --> 00:11:58,552 the only obligation of business was to make profits. 233 00:11:58,635 --> 00:12:00,763 [narrator] Gordon Gekko's character in the movie Wall Street 234 00:12:00,846 --> 00:12:02,806 epitomizes Friedman's philosophy. 235 00:12:02,890 --> 00:12:06,935 You own the company, that's right, you the stockholder, 236 00:12:07,019 --> 00:12:10,689 and you are all being royally screwed over by these bureaucrats. 237 00:12:10,773 --> 00:12:15,319 Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. 238 00:12:15,944 --> 00:12:18,322 [narrator] And corporations took his advice. 239 00:12:18,405 --> 00:12:22,201 [Stout] They start tying the top executives' pay 240 00:12:22,284 --> 00:12:24,077 to share price performance. 241 00:12:24,161 --> 00:12:28,415 Well, if 80% of the CEO's pay is based 242 00:12:28,499 --> 00:12:30,876 on what the share price is going to do next year, 243 00:12:30,959 --> 00:12:35,756 he or she is going to do their best to make sure that share price goes up. 244 00:12:36,131 --> 00:12:42,888 Even if the consequences might be harmful to employees, to customers, to society, 245 00:12:42,971 --> 00:12:46,642 to the environment or even to the corporation itself in the long-term. 246 00:12:46,725 --> 00:12:50,103 [narrator] CEOs put more money towards things that would increase stock prices 247 00:12:50,187 --> 00:12:54,858 in the short-term, like cutting costs or buying back a bunch of their own shares 248 00:12:54,942 --> 00:12:57,861 to decrease the supply and artficially bump up the price. 249 00:12:57,945 --> 00:13:03,325 Between 2007 and 2016, that's how companies in the S&P 500 250 00:13:03,450 --> 00:13:05,702 spent more than half their earnings. 251 00:13:05,911 --> 00:13:09,414 Another 39% went to their shareholders as dividends, 252 00:13:09,498 --> 00:13:12,876 which didn't leave much left to raise wages or expand 253 00:13:12,960 --> 00:13:14,127 or develop new products, 254 00:13:14,211 --> 00:13:17,506 things that are good for the economy in the long-term. 255 00:13:17,589 --> 00:13:21,802 If you have a long-term view that 100 years from now, 256 00:13:21,885 --> 00:13:24,429 I still want to be a company, maybe making something different, 257 00:13:24,513 --> 00:13:27,182 but I still wanna be here. So the choices that you make 258 00:13:27,266 --> 00:13:32,145 in terms of investments and people and in capital are different than 259 00:13:32,229 --> 00:13:36,275 if you want to make an investment and generate a return within 24 months. 260 00:13:36,608 --> 00:13:40,028 [narrator] In 2012, the Wausau Paper Company was making investments 261 00:13:40,112 --> 00:13:43,615 to switch its factories from making printing and writing paper 262 00:13:43,699 --> 00:13:44,992 to making tissue paper. 263 00:13:45,075 --> 00:13:47,619 But then a hedge fund bought up a bunch of shares 264 00:13:47,703 --> 00:13:50,038 and pushed the company to cut costs instead. 265 00:13:50,122 --> 00:13:52,165 Their argument would be, "We don't need to do that. 266 00:13:52,249 --> 00:13:54,877 What I'd rather see you do is to increase the dividend." 267 00:13:54,960 --> 00:13:56,587 As management, we disagreed with that. 268 00:13:56,670 --> 00:13:57,754 We offered concessions. 269 00:13:57,838 --> 00:14:01,049 We'd take a cut in pay just to leave the doors open. 270 00:14:01,133 --> 00:14:05,470 [woman] Wausau Paper says it plans to close the Brokaw Mill by March 31st... 271 00:14:05,554 --> 00:14:07,931 [man] Leaving about 450 people without work. 272 00:14:08,056 --> 00:14:11,393 The news is devastating, not just to the workers who will lose their jobs, 273 00:14:11,476 --> 00:14:14,897 but to the community of Brokaw, where the paper company got its start. 274 00:14:14,980 --> 00:14:19,484 December 7th, and I'll never forget that, that's when Pearl Harbor was, 275 00:14:19,568 --> 00:14:21,820 but that's the day I was burying my father, 276 00:14:22,404 --> 00:14:24,031 and it's the day I lost my job. 277 00:14:24,114 --> 00:14:27,910 Then the next day, I came to work, and it was just a madhouse. 278 00:14:28,035 --> 00:14:30,662 You know, people just crying. 279 00:14:30,746 --> 00:14:33,498 You know, "Why?" You know? And... 280 00:14:35,375 --> 00:14:36,293 It was a shock. 281 00:14:36,376 --> 00:14:41,465 [Hank Newell] My concern is we've evolved to this much shorter-term view 282 00:14:41,548 --> 00:14:43,300 on shareholder rights, 283 00:14:43,383 --> 00:14:48,430 versus a longer-term view on stakeholder responsibilities. 284 00:14:48,513 --> 00:14:51,099 This is a trend that's been going on for a while 285 00:14:51,183 --> 00:14:55,145 and has gotten even more powerful and important. 286 00:14:55,228 --> 00:14:59,733 It's seriously threatening the ability of our corporations 287 00:14:59,816 --> 00:15:04,696 to pursue the kinds of projects that lead to long-term corporate sustainability 288 00:15:04,780 --> 00:15:05,906 and economic growth. 289 00:15:06,615 --> 00:15:10,410 [narrator] Laying off workers, closing factories, keeping wages low. 290 00:15:10,494 --> 00:15:13,205 These are things that are bad for the economy overall, 291 00:15:13,288 --> 00:15:16,708 but can be great for a company's short-term profits 292 00:15:16,792 --> 00:15:19,419 and that's what the stock market cares about. 293 00:15:19,503 --> 00:15:21,672 The stock market got off to an impressive start... 294 00:15:21,755 --> 00:15:22,965 Another record today... 295 00:15:23,048 --> 00:15:24,758 A day for the record books on Wall Street... 296 00:15:24,841 --> 00:15:27,886 The US economy charges ahead and so do the bulls on Wall Street. 297 00:15:27,970 --> 00:15:29,471 This was a big day on Wall Street... 298 00:15:29,554 --> 00:15:32,599 The S&P 500 has raced out to a new all-time high. 299 00:15:32,683 --> 00:15:36,853 [narrator] As the stock market has grown, so have CEO paychecks. 300 00:15:38,188 --> 00:15:42,234 In 1973, the average CEO made about 22 times more 301 00:15:42,317 --> 00:15:43,860 than the average worker. 302 00:15:43,944 --> 00:15:48,281 By 2016, it was 271 times more. 303 00:15:48,615 --> 00:15:53,286 And as the stock market has grown bigger, fewer Americans have benefited. 304 00:15:53,370 --> 00:15:57,165 The share of Americans invested in the stock market is at its lowest point 305 00:15:57,249 --> 00:16:00,002 in 20 years, as the middle class dropped out. 306 00:16:00,502 --> 00:16:04,631 So it's no surprise that as stock prices have gone up in the United States, 307 00:16:04,881 --> 00:16:08,802 so has inequality, but it doesn't have to be this way. 308 00:16:09,553 --> 00:16:11,972 Stock markets give people a chance to decide 309 00:16:12,055 --> 00:16:16,476 which companies deserve to succeed, which ideas are worth a gamble. 310 00:16:16,560 --> 00:16:19,604 There's something about giving people games to play. 311 00:16:19,688 --> 00:16:23,233 You look at successful countries and they all have stock markets, 312 00:16:23,316 --> 00:16:26,153 and countries that tried to shut them down 313 00:16:26,236 --> 00:16:28,405 are coming around and instituting them now. 314 00:16:28,488 --> 00:16:31,950 [narrator] Stockholders can influence how companies behave, 315 00:16:32,034 --> 00:16:33,618 whose interest they take into account. 316 00:16:33,702 --> 00:16:37,956 Most of us are thinking about our long-term futures. 317 00:16:38,040 --> 00:16:42,544 We care about our neighbors and our children and our grandchildren. 318 00:16:42,627 --> 00:16:47,591 We have values and morals and want our companies to make money 319 00:16:47,674 --> 00:16:50,135 by doing things that are good for the world 320 00:16:50,218 --> 00:16:53,764 and not by harming people and destroying it.