5

Dumbest business moments

This is pretty entertaining/revealing. Fortune has a list of the dumbest moves in business for 2009. There've been a lot of them, and the year's only half-over.

Here's my take on some of the lowlights:

The SEC bars Bernie Madoff from trading securities, in mid-June. Yes, that means two weeks ago.

The stress tests. We were all so relieved to hear, in May, that the banks will be fine under adverse conditions. Adverse being 8.9% unemployment. We're at 9.4% now.

Treasury Secretary Tim Geither tells a Chinese audience their investments in the US are very safe. The audience burst out laughing.

Apple offers a game called Baby Shaker -- "See how long you can endure his or her adorable cries before you just have to find a way to quiet the baby down," the instructions read.

President Obama makes a big deal out of asking agencies to cut a total of $100 million from their budgets. That would reduce the projected deficit by .005%.

British Airways offers an "unpaid work option". Yes, that means, "do you mind working for free for a little while?"

Tropicana changes its packaging and gets swamped by angry customers. Apparently, the new design (on the right) reminded people too much of generic orange juice. I don't know. I just have a thing for branding horror stories:

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Anonymous's picture
Anonymous - Jul 2, 2009

american's have a real problem with good design... it's very telling that the store brands are more forward thinking than the big ones...

Jim Hayes's picture
Jim Hayes - Jul 1, 2009

Interesting - they didn't consider the banks trying to return TARP money so they could go back to giving ridiculous bonuses and paying incredible salaries?
But then, they're FORTUNE!

Anonymous's picture
Anonymous - Jul 1, 2009

10 if you count GM

Mark's picture
Mark - Jul 1, 2009

Nine of seventeen "business" dumb moves were actually made by the government.

Scott Jagow's picture
Scott Jagow - Jul 1, 2009

See, I told you it was revealing. But who can tell the difference now anyway? GM partners with Segway. Did you count that one?