Now sporting a hammerlock on the title world’s largest automaker, Toyota learns that quality and quantity do not always mix. Rocked by recalls on their recalls, Toyota’s fortunes spiral out of control as their cars accelerate the same way (out of control).
Category Archive: 2010
Jan 01
“Bleeding by the Numbers”
Long the dull, stodgy and most overlooked department in newsrooms, the Business News finds itself catapulted to the front pages based upon their new mantra, “If you can work the word trillion into the story, it leads.”
Jan 01
“Come Muppet and See Me Some Time”
Not satisfied with her own following, pop sensation Katy Perry does her breast to cleave a segment of Justin Bieber’s fan base away from him when she shows up for a bit part on Sesame Street.
Jan 01
“The bigger they are the harder they fill”`
At 2,717 feet tall, the 164 story Burj Khalifa tower in Dubai became the tallest skyscraper in the world when it opened in January. Ten months later, out of 900 apartments in the tower, 825 were still empty.
Jan 01
“Smoking Mad – Mother Nature grounds Europe”
Mother Nature blows her top and grounds – well, everyone in Western Europe. Iceland’s “E who cannot be pronounced” volcano erupts and shuts West European airports down for two days (at which time the kids slip out the back window to continue their legacies of sloth and abuse at Mom’s expense).
Jan 01
“Goof of Mexico” or Miner setback #1
An oil rig with a litany of regulatory speeding tickets explodes in the Gulf of Mexico. British Petroleum and their experts dig deep into their brain trust and lessons learned to come up with a plan to put out the fire by blowing the rig up all over again. Alas, here was one case where two negatives did not make a positive and, had they let the thing burn it might have saved a whole lot of spilled milk. British Petroleum pulls out all stops over the next 4 ½ months to stop the mother of all oil spills.
Related Statistic: An estimated 4.9 million barrels of crude oil was unleashed on the surrounding ecosystems. At 160 litres per barrel and a 46% yield once refined to produce gasoline for our cars, that translates into 360.6 million litres of gasoline at the pumps (or roughly 3 times the average (112million litre) daily gasoline consumption of Canadian drivers).
Jan 01
“Chile with a chance of Rescue (as long as the cameras are rolling)” or Miner setback #2
Bucking all odds, 33 Chilean miners survive a cave in (and the mining industry’s not so rapid response protocols) and climb out of the depths of Mother Earth 69 days after the roof collapsed.
Jan 01
“Spin Cycles, Spin Doctors and a little more than Water under the Bridge” or Miner setback #3
Meanwhile, in Hungary, a reservoir bursts and releases one million cubic meters of toxic waste into the neighboring towns and waterways. Once again the experts are galvanized into action. They roll out all of their manuals, disaster recovery tools and procedures en route to determining that they cannot do anything because nothing needs to be done. Their solution? Broadcast assurances that, “the toxic sludge will dilute enough so that by the time it arrives into the Danube on the weekend, it won’t be harmful anymore.”
Jan 01
“As things warm up globally, headlines accuse Scientists of cooking the books on global warming” or Miner setback #4
Speaking of spin, green scientists spent the better part of the year digging out of allegations (and headlines everywhere) that they were guilty of cooking the books on man’s contribution to, and imminent demise from Global Warming. Allegations of their fraud, fear mongering and sensationalism were later proved to be without grounds but alas you would have to dig deep into the back pages of your national or local (sensational fear mongering) voice of people (who have the money to manufacture the stories you need to hear).
Jan 01
Predictions for the Year 2011
Warning! Before you stop reading and turn to a more reliable source for those predictions you hope to hang your future stock portfolios on, first ponder the following:
“In 2000, Fortune magazine boasted that it had consulted with, “some of the best stock pickers in the country” to come up with a list of “ten stocks for ten years.” These stocks may have some short-term volatility, Fortune said. But they were sure fire winners if you hang on to them until 2010. They were right about one stock. The other nine were losers. Two of Fortune’s favourites? Nortel and Enron.”
… source: Ottawa Citizen December 30, 2010
Bowing to the pressure of special interest groups everywhere, Parliament outlaws all but the instrumental version of O Canada.
On the heels of their successful spin cycles of 2010, Industrial public relations officials pull the plug on any pretense of environmental concern when they roll out their lessons learned from past failures. In short, they announce that no future environmental fail-safes are deemed necessary as, in their words, it is impossible to destroy the planet before we destroy ourselves at which time when all the people are gone the world will return to its lush green roots.
Time Magazine votes that knob (or knobbette) who needs to inform the alleged person at the other end of their cell-phone (and everyone else who is trapped in their immediate proximity on buses, checkout lines and any other public venue) of the pointless minutiae of their pathetic day, their location, their likes & dislikes, their location now, what they are planning tonight, and new location now, … as their 2011 Person of the Year.
The world trembles and the “ick-ter scale” goes through the roof when unknown hackers infiltrate Iranian state television computers and cause all references to “this word from your local Ayatollah” to be followed by an X-rated out-take from Girls Gone Wild.
Tech Stocks go through the roof as everyone and every business everywhere needs to replace their pocket calculators, adding machines and computer business software packages with new models that can display and multiply trillions. Accountants are suddenly the new cool as they are seen marching to work with their widescreen “Big Boom” box calculators perched conspicuously on their shoulders.
The U.S. and Canadian Dollar as well as every other currency around the world is replaced with a new universal currency. This new coin is to be called the Trillion.
A BP whistle blower is accidentally run over by an American Coastguard cruiser at the foot of the court house steps where he was to have [allegedly] swore an affidavit to the effect that the well in the Gulf of Mexico was never successfully capped – it just ran out of gas.
BP (British Petroleum) conducts its final piece of damage control when it changes its name to MF (I will let you figure out the “Nature” of this abbreviation).
Big Oil and Toyota collaborate on salvaging their flagging reputations when they patent and release their answer to General Motors’ popular On Star system. All new Toyota’s are released with an on board “spin doctor.”
The world is only slightly surprised at the revelation that Justin Bieber is actually the illegitimate love child of Katy Perry and Elmo.
In a related prediction: Perverted puppets everywhere are asking, “Can you tell me how to get to Sesame Street?”