Crisis as Acceleration Fuel

“Immediately after 1974, this crisis began by unleashing over the ten following years an inflation rate higher than 10%, no longer nibbling then, but devouring established situations. The timber trade was naturally exposed. Francois Pinault took a hit like the others, but he managed to recover faster and in better shape than his competitors, much bigger than him, and to get carried by this unprecedented groundswell, conducive to active entrepreneurs. Those who understood that because of the crisis, nothing would ever be the same again. He also paid a hard price for the lesson. "You can't imagine what this man is capable of taking without even flinching," one of his collaborators told me back then.”

“This political shock could only further worsen things. So many opportunities surely for me who was in dire need to continue to expand. I was not mistaken.”

“After the administration began to prepare for war in the wake of the Nazi invasion of the Low Countries in the spring of 1940, Kaiser quickly moved from domestic concerns to war production. Kaiser also offered the administration alternative entrants in industries that hesitated to increase production; his belief in production as the "Fifth Freedom" fit both prewar and wartime administration needs. By the time Kaiser and Franklin D. Roosevelt developed a personal relationship during the war, the president appeared sympathetic to Kaiser's goals for a simple reason: they coincided with Roosevelt's.”

“In the summer of 1942, "fabulous" Henry J. Kaiser burst like a comet across the national sky. His West Coast shipyards had performed production miracles during the dark days of America's first six months in World War II, a time when merchant shipping across the Atlantic, a target of German submarines, was deemed the most crucial bottleneck to overcome for America's war effort. 1 He had made headlines for his magnesium enterprise and for the steel plant he was about to build, both of which provided the "arsenal of Democracy" with a West Coast alternative to sluggish East Coast producers. Kaiser was introduced at the National Press Club in July as "the modern”