Leftfield

Will Holiday Shoppers Bring Retail Back into the Black?

I'm not sure what Lorrie Norrington from Ebay was saying exactly in her vague pronouncement regarding Cyber Monday, but I would check the facts with that company. They have a habit of issuing positive spin that Wall St. picks up but their results are down since they began chasing small sellers, the core of their business, off the site a year ago under the delusional policies of CEO John Donohoe. It is always wise to check the figures as their statements are filled with future hopes of a "turnaround" that would never have been necessary had Ebay continued to provide access to it's formerly free-market platform to buyers and sellers of unique merchandise and bargains to drive business far higher in this distressed world economy.

Where are their actual Cyber Monday sales in the list?

There Will Always Be Wal-Mart and Amazon

Steve Jobs is another deserving CEO. But most of them, along with the whole leadership class are Marie Antoinettes. Someone in politics has to sell a government that serves and doesn't take another chunk out of the little guy again. The paradigm has been: Here is your dysfunctional lousy program with no possible future of getting funded but for smoke and mirrors and here is your huge new tax and regulatory burden.
Real leaders could weed the jungle of failed and cross-purposed programs, offer real solutions and......Savings. We'll need them to pay off the mess we've created so far.

How Radio Shack Can Shine

I went there to buy a universal voltage adaptor. Now, the transformer is about $18 and the little adaptor plugs are about $1.99/ea. rather than all included. It might cost about $10 to get all the plugs that were once included. Online, probably $6 for the whole thing.

I see Radio Shack as going the typical corporate MBA-by-the-books routine of trying to leave no money "on the table." Fleecing wherever and whenever possible.

Just like Ebay, and it's rampant amongst American corporations. These businesses are run by hacks who are paid insanely well to milk short term gains and tend to lose in the end. By the time they're gone.

No wonder American "leaders" are so focused on compliant boards and golden parachutes. Now, if you are overpaid enough you're a real friend of the politicians and can keep your bonuses through failure and bailout.

They don't care about their businesses. They don't have to. And, flavoradios were what, 30 years ago?

Circuit City: Closing Time

Schoonover strikes me as embematic of the corporate culture today. Seems when business becomes a publicly traded company they have a CEO who can be unaccountable for a long time and a compliant board that is interested in a nice-paying easy seat at the table and not so much in the business. That is why I am skeptical of Apple's future.

Countless companies get run into the ground by stupid management that seems to stay forever. The more aggressive and talented go where the money is to rape and pillage there. Unfortunately, in finance, they have bought off politicians and gamed the system to their taste long enough to run the whole planet into the ground now.

I had watched our Rube Goldberg system skeptically for decades amazed how long it remained mostly intact. Amazed even more how the elites are pulling off this amazing bailout heist once things finally fell apart.

The system is now about keeping the perpetrators intact as i see it. But I hope the market forces that finally hit Circuit City will clean up our country eventually.