I’m not sure whether your comment about being unnecessarily rude was directed at me or at vegdeg, but I think it’s high time we put Friedman’s thoughts on shareholder value in the same grave he inhabits. It’s an incredibly short-sighted and unsustainable ideal, and as an economic theory it’s been shown to be increasingly unworkable. The pendulum between regulation and deregulation has swung back and forth throughout American history, but never has corporate America been better positioned to halt the swing of the pendulum back into a more restrictive position. The American public is by and large unable to do anything to stop the incessant extraction of value from them by corporations and the financial markets.