As a colleague of mine commented, “Undersea features are very important when looking for a mate. I want to make sure she can hold her breath for 30 days when she’s laying eggs. “
The car companies want us to pour money down a rathole. I fully expect that to happen, as the administration does not have the guts to say ‘NO’. The companies threaten liquidation if they don’t get the cash. I think that’s fine. Let them go. If we are worried about unemployment, let’s just give the money directly to the employees who will lose their jobs instead.
The NYTimes has a noxious statement from the recipient-in-chief at Chrysler, Robert Nardelli.
“Chrysler will be viable,” said the company’s chairman,Robert L. Nardelli. “An orderly restructuring outside of bankruptcy, together with the completion of our stand-alone viability plan and enhanced by a strategic alliance with Fiat, is the best option for Chrysler employees, our unions, dealers, suppliers, customers, and certainly the taxpayers.” The company is exploring a deal with Fiat to share products.
So he mentioned the employees, the unions, the dealers, the suppliers, all of whom have political clout.
What about the shareholders? Oh, right. Chrysler is a private company owned by some very rich guys on Wall Street.
This brings to mind an old story:
“”Once in the dear dead days beyond recall, an out-of-town visitor was being shown the wonders of the New York financial district. When the party arrived at the Battery, one of his guides indicated some handsome ships riding at anchor. “Look, those are the bankers’ and brokers’ yachts. ‘Where are all the customers’ yachts?’ asked the naïve visitor.”
Some choice comments from an LA Times article:
Katie Ittner, a hairstylist at Awilda Salon on Robertson Boulevard, said she had a client who called in tears because she could no longer afford to spend $95 to $250 to get her hair colored and had no idea how to do the job herself.
On a recent weekday at Gallery Michael, where the Picasso prints run from about $2,000 to $700,000, fine art consultant Robert Avellano said he opened at 10 a.m. and did not see a customer until 2 p.m.
This is the story of a guy who had an accident in which he lopped off his thumb. When he found out what they would charge to reattach it, he bid it a fond farewell.
From the LATimes: “Koemer loves working with his hands..He knew he would miss his thumb….But there were too many other bills to pay”.
Michael Phelps, the man with the wingspan of a large bird, has been photographed using a bong. It is very likely that he was smoking some marijuana.
Since this is a business blog, I want to discuss the problems the ‘morality clause‘ can cause for endorsements. A morality clause usually says that a contract can be cancelled or have its value reduced if the athlete engages in certain activities. Michael Phelps’ contracts are sure to have a morality clause, and they will be invoked, if not to cancel the contract, then to subtly renegotiate the contract.
The most famous morality clause whopper was for Kobe Bryant, whose famous incident in Colorado is estimated to have cost him $300 million.
I saw these two very weird ads from AdSense. You gots to do better, Google!
No Remorse
I saw this interview, more like a three year old’s tantrum, posted on the NYTimes. The former head of the SEC,(also known as the world’s most toothless agency), Arthur Levitt, says everything was A-OK under his watch.
If you had a cancer growing inside of you for two eight years, and your oncologist didn’t detect it, wouldn’t you think the oncologist was remiss? Wouldn’t you sue the oncologist in court?
Bernie Madoff flourished under Levitt’s watch, in addition to all sorts of questionable behavior that led to the big profits made by insiders during the dot-com bubble.
In the interests of fairness, here is an embarassingly laudatory article from the CPA review saying how good Levitt is. Notice it does not talk about any prosecutions the SEC made, or who they caught. It is saying ‘Thanks for the softball game, Mr. Levitt’.
The SEC should be hated, it should be like a mean junkyard dog running around and biting Wall Street people. That is what a regulator does. It should not be a shill for Wall Street.
Update: Here is a nice article about Bernie Madoff, again from the NYTimes, being called a psychopath. It also says regulators and Bernie were very cozy-cozy.
Geithner is Obama’s choice for Treasury secretary. There are several reasons to reject his appointment, although I think our current rubber stamp, do-nothing Senate will wave him through with the equivalent of a slap on the wrist.
He is in favor of the bailout, not just the current bailout, but the last five bailouts. There have been so many, I have lost track.
He was on the New York Fed Reserve, and it is under his watch that the financial industry ran off the rails. Where is accountability when you need it?
Wall Street loves him, which means that the crooks consider him one of their own-ready to turn on the money spigot. Obama’s treasury secretary should be someone Wall Street detests, someone who will make them howl with anger. I don’t know who, but not lap-dog Geithner.
Geithner is also apt to play with fire. In his confirmation hearing, he is claiming that China is keeping its currency undervalued. The Chinese are very prickly about all sorts of things, and this is one of them. Why would Geithner anger our largest creditor? If confirmed, he is going to have to beg them to continue buying treasuries, plus he is going to hope they don’t start unloading their trillion-dollar cache of treasuries.
Finally, there is this great article that takes Geithner to task over his failure to pay taxes. Now, I understand that people mess up on their taxes. But to earn so much money, to know that it is a complicated situation, and then to blame TurboTax for it, is downright disingenuous.
But, he is sure to be confirmed. Don’t worry, Timmy, just hang in there, smile a lot, say you’re sorry, and soon you will be in charge of our 35 trillion dollar economy. God help us all.
Update:
Here is a post from Larry Dignan at ZDNet saying how a guy who cannot handle TurboTax should not be Treasury Secretary. (1/25/9)
Coke is always introducing new products, and this one is causing some ire. Coke basically takes a lightly carbonated beverage, tosses in a some vitamins (vitamin powder to be exact) and packages it like a medicine (meaning so splashy graphics or cartoon characters). The CSPI, a respected scientific organization, objects and sues them.
The unexplored story here is who else has joined CSPI in suing Coke. Suing large companies like Coke is a lawyer’s dream come true. Coke has so many billions that even the most jaded lawyer starts to get excited.
If you read the article carefully you see that “The other law firms involved in the case are Reese Richman LLP and Whatley Drake & Kallas, LLC.”. These guys are professional litigators, and they are going to squeeze a few hundred million out of Coke. In exchange, Coke will get a “settlement” that prevents anyone else from suing them, and the consumers will get a fifty-cent coupon.
Coke wouldn’t care about CSPI suing them, but when these law firms join the game, then Coke starts to take the suit seriously.
Nissan UK stores car on expensive test track
More photos here courtesy of the Guardian
This photo is amazing. First, I would like to know why Nissan would build a test track in the U.K. Are UK drivers really that different from Japanese drivers? Nissan and its predecessor, Datsun, did fine for 20 years before building a test track in the UK. Second, it shows us how bad the car industry is, that Nissan thinks it is OK to use a test track, with its very expensive smooth track, as storage. There are three rows of cars in some places and two rows in others. This track has room for more!
Wikipedia says: “In 2005 the overall median age for automobiles was 8.9 years, a significant increase over 1990 when the median age of vehicles in operation in the US was 6.5 years”. There were 250,851,833 cars in the USA in 2005.
So the age of a car went from 7 years to 9 from 1990 to 2005, a time that the US economy was doing really well, from the stock market boom to the dot com boom to the real estate boom.
Now that we are in a busted economy, the situation is even more dire for carmakers. Cars have become even more reliable. Even American cars are now worth buying again, with the Chevy Malibu beating the Toyota Camry in some surveys.
So if the average age went from 7 to 9 years in a booming economy, how much longer do you think people will keep their cars in a bad economy? Much, much longer. My car is ten years old and runs just fine. If it breaks, I would replace the engine or the transmission or whatever instead of laying out $20,000 for a comparable new car.
The carmakers are in for a long, extended, painful downturn, even if the economy starts to recover.
