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- undergrace, on 01/07/2009, -0/+64There are actually only 21 Dumbest Moments, spread over 23 slides. Enjoy not flipping through the crappy slideshow :)
1. Detroit Pleads Poverty in Style
Like someone arriving at a food bank in a limousine, the chief executives of the three major U.S. automakers spark outrage when they fly their corporate jets to Washington D.C. to beg Congress for a multi-billion dollar bailout. Yes, we know that corporate jets are often a cost-effective way for the heads of far-flung corporations to get around. But someone should have known this wasn't going to look good (and, sure enough, Congress sent the auto chiefs away empty-handed). At the very least, couldn't they have shared a ride?
2. Lamest Road Trip Ever
Let's see ... corporate jets are a no-no ... the subway doesn't go that far ... A bike ride might just kill us ... I know! Let's drive the 10 hours from Detroit to D.C. -- in one of our cool hybrid cars! Given a second chance after the private-jet fiasco to plead their case before Congress, the Detroit 3 take to the road (separately, of course) in a company fuel-sipper. In the case of Chrysler's Robert Nardelli, the exercise in overkill is particularly awkward: The Chrysler Aspen Hybrid he drove will soon be discontinued.
3. Paulson's 3-Page Plea
Days after Lehman Brothers collapses and two other giants teeter on the abyss, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson submits his plan for saving the U.S. financial system. All of three pages, the proposal seeks carte-blanche access to $700B in government funding to buy up troubled mortgage assets with scant details on how or where the money will be spent. Just as galling, he includes a provision in the bill that will exempt his spending from court challenges. Congress axes the legal cloak. But the damage is done, and the proposal fails in the House -- triggering another massive market sell-off.
4. Bloating up the Bailout
Maybe three pages wasn't such a bad idea after all ... When Congress is done with it, Paulson's proposal for saving the U.S. financial system balloons to 451 pages and is loaded with pork barrel spending -- including, unbelievably, a cut in taxes on toy arrows and an extended tax break on "wool products." Backers of the arrow tax exemption -- section 503, for the record -- say it reverses a wrongheaded 2004 law that sharply increased tax rates on cheap kids' arrows.
5. Mozilo's 'Disgusting' Reply-All
Already under attack as the overpaid, over-tanned and over-zealous pioneer of subprime mortgages, former Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo doesn't do himself any favors in May after reading a customer's e-mailed plea for help with his home loan. Intending to forward the missive to a colleague, Mozilo instead hits "reply all" and sends a response calling the beleaguered homeowner's request "unbelievable" and "disgusting." Mozilo's heartfelt reply makes its way onto the Internet -- and [he] finds himself out of a job after Bank of America acquires Countrywide in July.
6. An iPhone App for Just $999.99
The release of the new Apple iPhone in July introduces to the masses the world of mobile video games and other time-sucking applications designed by non-Apple software developers -- most of them available for less than $10. But one application sneaks past Apple's gatekeepers and onto the company's new App Store: "I Am Rich," a $999.99 screen-saver whose sole feature is a glowing red jewel. Apple gets blasted for making the application available for sale and then quietly removing it, but the real losers? The eight suckers who bought it.
7. Paulson's 'Bazooka' Backfires
As shares of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac plunge on worries about their viability, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson assures Congress that merely promising to give mortgage lenders access to Treasury funding would calm market fears -- at no cost to Uncle Sam. "If you've got a squirt gun in your pocket, you may have to take it out," Paulson tells legislators. "If you've got a bazooka and people know you've got it, you may not have to take it out." Congress delivers, but investors aren't buying it. Two months later, Treasury takes over both companies in a move that could cost billions.
8. Fannie's Delusions of Grandeur
Fannie Mae CEO Dan Mudd proves once again that his crystal ball is malfunctioning. In May, Mudd predicts that the government-sponsored mortgage lender will "feast" on weakened competition in the mortgage market -- even as its own prospects dim amid mounting credit losses and asset writedowns. By September, on the brink of collapse, Fannie gets a new owner -- Uncle Sam -- and Mudd loses a job.
9. Sex for Oil
This fall, the division of the Department of Interior responsible for granting leases for energy exploration and production in federal waters is caught with its pants down. The agency's Inspector General finds that staffers were taking gifts, having sex and engaging in illegal drug use with employees of some of the oil companies they oversee. As the report detailing the ethical abuses puts it: "We ... discovered a culture of substance abuse and promiscuity in the ... program."
10. Global Warming Is a Crock?
The General Motors exec behind the Chevrolet Volt electric car hands environmentalists another twig to beat GM with when he reportedly calls global warming "a crock of sh-t." Bob Lutz, GM's vice chairman for product development, later addresses the uproar on his own blog: "General Motors is dedicated to the removal of cars and trucks from the environmental equation, period. And, believe it or don't: So am I!"
11. Housing (Non) Rescue
Remember Hope for Homeowners? We didn't think so. In July, Congress passes the only housing rescue to date: a plan to guarantee up to $300 billion worth of mortgages and prevent more than 300,000 foreclosures. But to participate, banks must take steep losses -- and doing so is voluntary. The anti-climactic upshot: A piddling 321 applications have been filed since the program's Oct. 1 launch -- and not one loan workout has been completed, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
12. Cox's Short-Selling Ban
Under attack for not doing more to stop the market plunge, SEC chief Christopher Cox finally institutes a temporary ban on shorting 799 financial stocks. It "will restore equilibrium to markets," Cox promises. But shares in banks, brokerages and insurance companies continue to plunge, losing a quarter of their value during the three weeks the order was effective. Some investors say the short ban hastened the flight of capital from stock and bond markets, by showing the government could intervene in markets in unexpected and troublesome ways.
13. McCain's Economic Denial
At least he warned us: On the morning of Sept. 15, as Lehman Brothers declares bankruptcy, Republican presidential candidate John McCain declares "the fundamentals of this economy are strong." By day's end, the Dow falls more than 500 points, the date becomes known as Black Monday, and McCain starts backpedaling fast. Maybe we should have seen this coming: In late 2007, McCain admits "the issue of economics is not something I've understood as well as I should," adding, "I've got Greenspan's book."
14. Obama's Tough Talk
In a rare off-message moment for Barack Obama's presidential campaign, a top economic adviser privately assures Canadian officials that his candidate didn't really mean it when he threatened to renegotiate the NAFTA, which U.S. blue-collar workers complain has shifted jobs to Canada and Mexico. "Political maneuvering" was how Austan Goolsbee described Obama's protectionist rhetoric to Canadian authorities. Smart politics -- until a memo of Goolsbee's meeting leaks out and Goolsbee is banished to no-media-allowed shed for the remainder of the election.
15. Microsoft Overbids for Yahoo
The headlines seem so quaint now: Microsoft makes a $44.6 billion play for Yahoo in yet another bid to catch up to Google. The $31-per-share offer represents a 61% premium over Yahoo's price at the time of the February overture. Microsoft's strategy makes some sense, but CEO Steve Ballmer fails to anticipate Yahoo chief Jerry Yang's intransigence, which ultimately scuttles any chance of a deal. Nor does Ballmer foresee the economic crisis that, by year end, is dragging down the tech sector. With Yahoo shares trading at $12 apiece, the company is now worth $17 billion.
16. Yahoo Turns Down Payday
If Microsoft's offer for Yahoo was wrong-headed, Yahoo's opposition to it was downright bone-headed. It took until July, when Microsoft finally throws up its hands and walks away, for Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang to fumble a deal that would have rewarded shareholders with a payday that was three times what Yahoo shares were fetching at year-end. Along the way, Yahoo flirts with Google -- only to see any potential deal scuttled by antitrust regulators. As 2009 approaches, Yahoo's chances of turning itself around look slim.
17. SEC's Madoff Miss
It took plunging stocks to bring to light the largest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history -- an estimated $50 billion fraud orchestrated by Bernard L. Madoff, one of Wall Street's best-known money managers. The scheme -- in which money from new investors is disguised as market returns for early investors -- allegedly goes on for decades before Madoff effectively turns himself in. As news reports reveal that the SEC had probed Madoff and his firm over the years, chief Christopher Cox cops to the screw-up and "apparent multiple failures over at least a decade to thoroughly investigate these allegations."
18. Rage Against Oil Speculators
With oil prices skyrocketing toward their $147-a-barrel high in July, people smell a rat. Oil traders, hedge funds, Wall Street types ... they're all to blame for artificially inflating the price of crude and reaping huge profits at the expense of drivers everywhere. Or so the thinking (and Congressional hearings) goes until prices suddenly collapse throughout the fall, bringing oil down to about $37 a barrel. The culprit this time? Softening demand amid a reeling global economy. So much for thinking fundamentals don't matter.
19. The 'Death' of Steve Jobs
Newspapers prepare obituaries of famous people before they die, but Bloomberg News accidentally releases an obit for Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who -- despite a well-publicized brush with pancreatic cancer -- is still alive and kicking. As if that wasn't enough, in October a post on CNN's user-generated site, iReport, claims that Jobs has suffered a heart attack. The erroneous report sends Apple's stock down 10% in just 10 minutes. At his next media appearance, Jobs appears in front of a giant screen with the message, "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."
20. Gramm's 'Mental Recession'
In early July, as the financial crisis spreads to Main Street, McCain campaign co-chair and former senator Phil Gramm appeals to voters and their economic anxieties by calling them a "nation of whiners" and dismisses a troubled economy as a "mental recession." McCain denounces his words and Gramm steps down, but the damage is done.
21. Bill Miller's Bad Bets
The Legg Mason manager famously beat the market 15 years in a row, but now the market is returning the favor -- with a vengeance. Miller's Legg Mason Value Trust was down 59% through Dec. 2, 2008, posting a far worse showing than the S&P 500, which was down "only" 38%. Miller's problems stem mostly from big bets on beaten-down financial companies earlier this year, many of which then got even more beaten down. Among the biggest losers for Miller were Bear Stearns, AIG and Freddie Mac. - kylethompson1, on 01/07/2009, -1/+25FUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCKKKKKK... 23 PAGES?!
- StigNordas, on 01/06/2009, -0/+22The "I Am Rich" app was brilliant, shouldn't be on this list.
- PrairieDoggin, on 01/06/2009, -0/+10FTA: 'From former Countrywide CEO's accidental reply-all e-mail to reports of Steve Jobs' death (he's still alive), click through our gallery as Fortune picks the 21 dumbest moments in business for 2008. You won't know whether to laugh or cry.'
You sir did not read the article either... 21 dumbest moments in business... - andsalvatierra, on 01/07/2009, -0/+9Thank you for making reading this article much more convenient. +dugg.
Websites please take note: If you make it easier to read and in just one page, it's more likely visitors will go through the whole thing instead of leaving in frustration. - inactive, on 01/07/2009, -1/+10Actually the I Am Rich app seemed to be business genius for the developer if you ask me.
Oh, and buried for unnecessary slides how and inaccurate title. - risenphoenixkai, on 01/07/2009, -0/+9Wow, they honestly expect people to click through 23 pages for less than 1000 words of content?
Good thing these guys don't do the same thing in their magazine. We'd be out of trees by the end of their first edition.
Seriously, who started this "one paragraph per page" *****? - PrairieDoggin, on 01/06/2009, -1/+9Next, next, next, next, next.... buried
Only 21 'dumbest moments' were listed. (might want to read your articles before you submit them) - truthseeker69, on 01/07/2009, -0/+8@undergrace: 1E+9 thanks to you for ripping that out.
- inactive, on 01/07/2009, -0/+7Dumbest moment in business:
Financier 1: hey we've got all of these high risk ***** mortgages no one wants
Financier 2: Let's bundle all of this ***** together and call them "Collateralized Debt Obligations"
Financier 1: Does this make them any different than the ***** we're already selling?
Financier 2: No, but the name is really long and has big words which will make people think they're buying something really valuable.
Financier 1: Brilliant! Let's do it! - GeorgeStone2, on 01/07/2009, -0/+4Cheers for the summery. I wasn't going to bother clicking 23 times.
They left this off the list though. I actually lol'd when I heard this on the news.
Porsche VW takeover
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/tr ...
If there's ever been a time to say OWNED! it's now.
This belongs on the list a lot more than some of those others. - honeybrass, on 01/07/2009, -1/+5Dumbest thing was not putting them on one or max two ***** pages.
- inactive, on 01/07/2009, -0/+421. Bill Miller's Bad Bets
21.1 MWalker puts head up ass - vertigo32, on 01/07/2009, -0/+4With #1, I don't know to laugh or cry.
Watching congressmen who fly to and from Washington DC on private jets while their states are millions or even billions of dollars underbudget ripping on executives for doing the same thing was some great irony.
After all, it's not like Congress put the corporate tax laws in place that make those flights a $20,000 write off for the Big 3. Congress held out a carrot for corporations then beat the Big 3 over the head for taking it. - drcreek, on 01/07/2009, -0/+4Yeah, They could have saved room and just listed all the banks on one page.
- jameslhwalker, on 01/07/2009, -0/+2No *****, that is why the article was blaming apple as they permitted it.
- mokodo, on 01/07/2009, -0/+2every new page comes with different advertisements, I guess that is very profitable for some people... but I'm just being naïve....
- inactive, on 01/07/2009, -1/+3Seeing it been on CNN's website for over two weeks......Wow
- DrewPeacock, on 01/07/2009, -1/+3Financiers 1 & 2 are now millionaires.
- redbytex, on 01/07/2009, -0/+2That slideshow was impossible to use. I click next then it takes me to the beginning. I click page 6 and it takes me to page 5. I click page 7 and it takes me to page 3.
Am I the only one experiencing this? - rankftw, on 01/07/2009, -0/+2boring
- Egoist, on 01/08/2009, -0/+1Brilliant tactic by the ignorant. Simply because you've never heard of the Community Reinvestment Act that legalized these types of high-risk loans to those who can't afford them, nor how Obama's own law firm sued banks who did not offer loans to those who could not afford them, doesn't make it untrue.
- Psych77, on 01/07/2009, -0/+1Although I like it, you already posted this in the comments, just 6 minutes ago. Did you forget already?
- nrvous250gt, on 01/07/2009, -0/+1#1 - Bailout.
- JustinHopewell, on 01/08/2009, -0/+1Digg for the picture of Paulson looking like an ogre screaming a battle cry before storming the castle wall.
- wifirewire2, on 01/07/2009, -0/+1only 23?!
- inactive, on 01/07/2009, -0/+1We're going to Ibiza!
- yunus, on 01/07/2009, -0/+1How can you narrow it down to just 23?
- GeorgeStone2, on 01/07/2009, -0/+1Fuuu-
I didn't think it submitted. It gave me some session *****. So I decided to post it as its own comment.
My bad. - mmeiser, on 01/07/2009, -0/+1Oh, man... that was just .... hil ar i o u s... oh... man, pardon, just laughing so hard.
Man, I'm going to miss 2008.
All that fun and not a word about president bush either.
Now do bush! Do bush! - renilative, on 01/08/2009, -0/+1I swear to you 23 is an understatement
- DrWho520, on 01/07/2009, -0/+1I never heard about the sex-for-oil thing! If you are management /anywhere/ in the oil industry, you have it made.
- mmeiser, on 01/07/2009, -0/+1"This fall, the division of the Department of Interior responsible for granting leases for energy exploration and production in federal waters is caught with its pants down. The agency's Inspector General finds that staffers were taking gifts, having sex and engaging in illegal drug use with employees of some of the oil companies they oversee. As the report detailing the ethical abuses puts it: 'We ... discovered a culture of substance abuse and promiscuity in the ... program.'"
Never has a failure of regulation been so sexy. - thrashertm, on 01/07/2009, -0/+1How about Goldman Sachs buying back it's own stock at $217 per share last year, when it is currently trading for $87. DUMB!
http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2007/12/18/goldmans-one ... - jedimasterchief, on 01/07/2009, -6/+61) Not listening to Ron Paul.
- souljaboytellem, on 01/07/2009, -1/+1"Apple gets blasted for making the application available for sale and then quietly removing it, but the real losers? The eight suckers who bought it."
Ha-Ha, i can't even imagine the parents reaction(I'm assuming this was mostly done by pre-teen, to mid-teen kids misreading it as $9.99)when they saw this iTunes purchase, i would have got my ass beat - mustang460, on 01/07/2009, -2/+2#24 shutting down stage6
divx has been on life support post stage6, only surviving from the yahoo toolbar installs from past stage6 users - wwwforexsigcom, on 01/07/2009, -0/+0The stock drop when the death report came out shows what happens when false reports are given to the public.
- inactive, on 01/07/2009, -1/+1Use FF3 to resolve that.I guess its only you.
- publiclurker, on 01/07/2009, -1/+1Repeating the lie does not make it true.
also, why don't you add a few code words into your post to show what you really mean. - Egoist, on 01/07/2009, -3/+2You forgot the beginning of the story:
Democratic lawmaker 1: We need to help poor people buy houses they can't afford by relaxing safeguards and forcing banks to offer those loans or face stiff penalties. We'll call this law the CRA!
Democratic lawmaker 2: Irresponsible pandering at its best! - GeorgeStone2, on 01/07/2009, -2/+1They left this off the list though. I actually lol'd when I heard this on the news.
Porsche VW takeover
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/tr ...
If there's ever been a time to say OWNED! it's now.
This belongs on the list a lot more than some of those others. - 6oo63D, on 01/07/2009, -2/+1Not related to the article but, but anybody heard from mrbabyspam
- Tyrial333, on 01/07/2009, -2/+0Dick Cheney should be blamed for all the dumb business moments of the year.
- mwalker05, on 01/06/2009, -7/+3there are only 20. did you even read this retarded slide show or did you just submit it for the glamor of it being on the front page? a glance at your digg / submission history indicates the latter
- amous, on 01/06/2009, -11/+3i did blog about that post..really awesome
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