Presumably they thought that Mr. Nardelli was the best man they could find when they hired him, and they paid the price necessary to get him. Shame on them? Plenty of people complain about “short-sighted management” so wouldn’t firing the CEO after 1 year of bad results be just that?

Just to be fair, let’s go to the videotape as they say and look at that stock chart:

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=HD&t=5y

This is only 5 years but I don’t think it leaves out anything important. When would *you* have kicked Bob to the curb? 2002-2003 a lot of companies had charts like that. 2003-2005 it doubled back. If muddling for two years 2005-07 is a hanging offense then we need to get a lot more rope. A lot of decent companies have not and maybe never will again see their valuations circar 1999-2000.

Now I’m coming at this from a distance–I haven’t watched the company closely, and to the extent that I have, Lowe’s has eaten their lunch from a client experience perspective. Still, I think the characterization of this being a steady downhill slide is not entirely supported by the stock price.