Ge Historical Quotes

The other major oil industry suppliers were similarly weary, trying to shore up earnings by slashing jobs, trimming project costs, and squeezing their own customers and suppliers wherever they could. (The wildcatters had it worse: many of the mom-and-pop operators of the American oil patch started to file for bankruptcy.) One year later, GE would merge its oil and gas unit into the oil-field giant Baker Hughes, keeping for itself a more than 50 percent stake in the company and spinning out a new public company to be run by Simonelli, under GE’s control. The transaction eased GE’s exposure to the ongoing oil rout and gave the new company, dubbed “Baker Hughes, a GE company,” vast new areas of redundant employees and operations to eliminate. With Baker Hughes, GE changed its tone a bit. The deal was transformational, but in which intended direction wasn’t made clear. GE execs like Bornstein would proclaim that the deal gave them “optionality,” but the reality was that investors were left in the dark on the strategy: Was GE doubling down on oil? Or was it preparing to exit the industry? The idea of holding such a long-term option was nice, but the game pieces in the positioning were people, and those who didn’t leave their job had no idea where the future of the company might be. The new arrangement didn’t spare Lufkin. The historic foundry was closed. The city’s annual financial report now just shows a blank line when listing the company’s employment tally, evidence of the more than four thousand jobs that evaporated after GE came to town. Between two Mondays—the day GE announced it was coming to Lufkin and the day the company said it would move on, leaving a shuttered foundry at the center of town—just 868 days had passed.

The Historical Setting of Genesis Mesopotamia: Sumer Through Old Babylonia Sumerians. It is not possible at this time to put Ge 1–11 into a specific place in the historical record. Our history of the ancient Near East begins in earnest after writing has been invented, and the earliest civilization known to us in the historical record is that of the Sumerians. This culture dominated southern Mesopotamia for over 500 years during the first half of the third millennium BC (2900–2350 BC), known as the Early Dynastic Period. The Sumerians have become known through the excavation of several of their principal cities, which include Eridu, Uruk and Ur. The Sumerians are credited with many of the important developments in civilization, including the foundations of mathematics, astronomy, law and medicine. Urbanization is also first witnessed among the Sumerians. By the time of Abraham, the Sumerians no longer dominate the ancient Near East politically, but their culture continues to influence the region. Other cultures replace them in the political arena but benefit from the advances they made. Dynasty of Akkad. In the middle of the twenty-fourth century BC, the Sumerian culture was overrun by the formation of an empire under the kingship of Sargon I, who established his capital at Akkad. He ruled all of southern Mesopotamia and ranged eastward into Elam and northwest to the Mediterranean on campaigns of a military and economic nature. The empire lasted for almost 150 years before being apparently overthrown by the Gutians (a barbaric people from the Zagros Mountains east of the Tigris), though other factors, including internal dissent, may have contributed to the downfall. Ur III. Of the next century little is known as more than 20 Gutian kings succeeded one another. Just before 2100 BC, the city of Ur took control of southern Mesopotamia under the kingship of Ur-Nammu, and for the next century there was a Sumerian renaissance in what has been called the Ur III period. It is difficult to ascertain the limits of territorial control of the Ur III kings, though the territory does not seem to have been as extensive as that of the dynasty of Akkad. Under Ur-Nammu’s son Shulgi, the region enjoyed almost a half century of peace. Decline and fall came late in the twenty-first century BC through the infiltration of the Amorites and the increased aggression of the Elamites to the east. The Elamites finally overthrew the city. It is against this backdrop of history that the OT patriarchs emerge. Some have pictured Abraham as leaving the sophisticated Ur that was the center of the powerful Ur III period to settle in the unknown wilderness of Canaan, but that involves both chronological and geographic speculation. By the highest chronology (i.e., the earliest dates attributed to him), Abraham probably would have traveled from Ur to Harran during the reign of Ur-Nammu, but many scholars are inclined to place Abraham in the later Isin-Larsa period or even the Old Babylonian period. From a geographic standpoint it is difficult to be sure that the Ur mentioned in the Bible is the famous city in southern Mesopotamia (see note on 11:28). All this makes it impossible to give a precise background of Abraham. The Ur III period ended in southern Mesopotamia as the last king of Ur, Ibbi-Sin, lost the support of one city after another and was finally overthrown by the Elamites, who lived just east of the Tigris. In the ensuing two centuries (c. 2000–1800 BC), power was again returned to city-states that controlled more local areas. Isin, Larsa, Eshnunna, Lagash, Mari, Assur and Babylon all served as major political centers.