The use of stock options to encourage executives to maximise shareholder value weakened American capitalism to an incalculably dramatic extent. The weakening of American producers owing to the triumph of maximisation of shareholder value and the short-termism it engendered, manipulated by executives eager to maximise income from stock options, is a central part of the story and a component of why, for example, manufacturing (and industrial wages and benefits) in Germany look so different.
...
The impact of this aspect of financialisation is that the combination of maximising shareholder value, the use of stock options to compensate top executives, and the stock buybacks these policies encouraged changed the direction of American capitalism.
