A salute to General Electric 💡

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A salute to General Electric 💡

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Tonight: An American icon meets the end of the road. Plus: Starbucks' former CEO has given us some, uh, interesting lessons in public speaking. Let's get into it.

By Allison Morrow

💡 GE BREAKS UP

General Electric, a company so old they actually thought that name was a good branding decision, is splitting up.

Shares of the industrial conglomerate shot up 6% Tuesday morning after it announced it would spin off into three separate publicly traded companies for its aviation, health care and energy businesses. GE believes it will be able to maximize value without a bygone conglomerate structure.

This is a dramatic move for a behemoth that was once one the most powerful conglomerates in history. Once upon a time, GE dominated electricity, lighting, aviation, television, radio, music, appliances, finance and health care, my colleagues Paul R. La Monica and Chris Isidore write.

But the breakup is also a long time coming. The 2008 financial crisis dealt a serious blow to GE Capital, the conglomerate's once-mighty corporate financing arm. And GE made a disastrous bet on the fossil fuel industry 2015. In recent years, under CEO Larry Culp, it's been selling off assets, often at a loss, to pay down debt.

Many saw the writing on the wall last year, when GE, which was founded by Thomas Edison, finally offloaded its light bulb unit.

While GE isn't exactly dying – the aviation spinoff will retain the name — the news marks the end of its more than 100 years as an industrial conglomerate and an icon of American manufacturing.

#️⃣ NUMBER OF THE DAY

$15.24 trillion

Americans have never been in so much debt as they are now. Between July and September, US household debt climbed to $15.24 trillion, an almost 2% increase from the second quarter of the year. It's not hard to see why: Home and car prices are surging, vaccines are making it safe to go out again, and government aid tied to the pandemic is winding down.

☕ WAIT. WHAT?

The next time you've got to make a big presentation at work, remember three basic guidelines:

Be confident.
Use visual aids.
Don't compare your company's benefits package to Holocaust prisoners sharing blankets in concentration camps.

Really can't overstate the importance of that third one. Apparently, Howard Schultz, the former Starbucks CEO, missed the day they taught that lesson in business school.

So here's what happened: Schultz, who is Jewish, addressed a group of Starbucks employees over the weekend, attempting to illustrate the company's commitment to morality, honor and humanity. In his spiel, he recalled how a rabbi in Israel told him about the experiences of prisoners at concentration camps in Poland: They were only given a few blankets and had to share.

"Not everyone, but most people shared their blanket with five other people," said Schultz. "So much of that story is threaded into what we've tried to do at Starbucks — is share our blanket."

The analogy, while meant sincerely, didn't quite land. Again: Holocaust prisoners' selflessness while facing death is not a direct parallel to a Fortune 500 company providing basic benefits to its employees.

"Felt like it wasn't a very appropriate analogy," a Starbucks employee who attended the meeting told the New York Times. The Forward, a Jewish publication, called the remarks "mystifying."

Starbucks didn't immediately return a request for comment.

Here's another thing: Schultz was talking to a bunch of baristas who are voting on a unionization effort, which Starbucks is fighting. Let's turn to CNN Business' David Goldman for commentary:

"I mean, even if you grant the analogy on its own terms, isn't sharing the blanket like working together in some sort of unified group, like a ... union?"

WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON?

🚫 An internet outage hit thousands of Comcast customers in areas across the United States early Tuesday.

💸 The US auto safety regulator announced its first-ever reward to a whistleblower, handing out more than $24 million to a former Hyundai employee who provided key information about safety lapses at the South Korean carmaker.

🌭 Tyson Foods, Conagra and Kraft Heinz have notified their retail customers in recent weeks that they will raise prices in January for some frozen and refrigerated meats, including hot dogs, sausages and lunch meats,

🛍️ Kmart is closing its last-remaining store in Michigan, the state where the retail chain launched in 1899. It's one of series of store closings that will leave the company with only six locations in the continental United States.