When the 2008 Lehman Brothers bankruptcy triggered a global recession, Toyota Motor Company lost money. In December of that year, with a photo of Toyota board members bowing in shame, a New York Times headline trumpeted, “Toyota Expects its First Loss in 70 years.” “They’ve caught the same cold that Detroit has caught,” said Christopher J. Richter, senior analyst in Tokyo at Calyon Capital Markets Asia. “Everything is going wrong for Toyota this year.”
My reaction was anger at the idiocy of some of these articles. How could Toyota be compared to the Detroit automakers who were on the verge of bankruptcy? Why isn’t the focus on the 70 years of profitability and the huge cash reserves Toyota had piled up for a crisis just like this?
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