Live by your share price, die by your share price

In the New Yorker, James Surowiecki raises an interesting question:

"But the impact of these mistakes was made worse by a seemingly harmless decision that these companies made many years ago: the decision to go public. Doing so put the firms at the mercy of the stock market, and last week that mercy evaporated."

Read it and think about the issues. It makes some sense to me.