Jesus Puts Business Out of Business

Ten years ago, there were good companies and great companies, as business guru, Jim Collins, pointed out. Now many of those "great" companies have closed their doors.

What a difference a decade makes ....

In 2001, business author Jim Collins wrote his seminal book, Good to Great, as a sequel to his other groundbreaking work, Built to Last. Both books were aimed at profiling companies that had "made the leap" to greatness and were "built to last" well into the future. For example, in 2000, Circuit City was outperforming General Electric -- the old-school standard in electronics -- by 6-to-1 in the market. Fannie Mae, the mortgage lender, was beating companies like Coca-Cola in stock value around the same time. Philip Morris was on Collins' list, too, and was still pulling in massive revenues.

Other companies also were basking in the glow of success in 2001. They didn't make Collins' list, but they were no less a standard fixture in the conscience and checkbooks of American consumers. You could always rent a movie at your local Blockbuster store or stop in at Borders to browse for books, to name a couple of examples. These companies were firing on all...