Interview with Peter Drucker

I had an opportunity to interview famed management guru Peter Drucker in July, 1991 for a Forbes article.

When I asked him about the troubles of big corporations, like IBM and General Motors, Drucker replied that all large companies which emerge as a pioneer in a field eventually mature and face competition. They simply they must decide which size is best. “Elephants have a hard time adapting. Cockroaches outlive everything.”

Drucker alluded to the hidden growing troubles of Japan, due to the large amount of T-bills and real estate they’d invested in the United States and their high capital gains tax.

In the U.S., Drucker didn’t foresee a depression in the 1990s, but did predict a declining number of banks through mergers as the interest-generated revenues of the traditional structure of banking were replaced with service fee-generated revenues.

Finally, when I asked if Keynesianism was finally dead, Drucker replied that he was not anti-Keynesian, but rather non-Keynesian. He surprised me by stating that he felt Keynes was actually ultraconservative politically, believing in abolishing labor unions and maintaining the free-market. Keynes despised American Keynesians.

What did Drucker foresee for the world?
Transnational governments to deal with the environment.
Transnational money to coordinate currencies.
And economic regionalism, less focus on nation-states and more on ethnicity.