The GE way out

It appears that Dow Jones has dropped the storied conglomerate GE - which has had a very disappointing few years and in fact decades - from its "industrial average" index the world's most widely watch

It isn’t that often that a bit of finance news — the composition of a stock-market index, for instance — strikes one as having enormous cultural importance. There are, however, bits of news that can immediately be seen as vastly significant. They are symbols, in fact, of the passage of an era; indications that the books and movies of that era are now historical artefacts instead of contemporary work.  

This week, we received one bit of such news. It appears that Dow Jones has dropped the storied conglomerate General Electric — which has had a very disappointing few years and in