When something or someone tries to be what they aren’t it’s like roadkill.
In this case: an epic (multi-million dollar) demonstration that MSFT Really. Doesn’t. Get it.
Microsoft Corp., engrossed in multi-million dollar marketing blitz to counter comical ads from rival Apple, Inc., is now using a portion of its budget to fuel guerilla retail tactics near the Mac maker’s stores.
Painful.
Theoretical? Abstract? Removed?
It’s been over 9 months since I emailed some friends a snarky-yet-frighteningly-incisive piece laying out the intricacies of the current sub-prime-and-the-kitchen-sink crisis. Fast-forward to today, where the NYT tells the exact same story, detailing the tragic implications that this human propensity for denial has had on school districts, municipal authorities and local governments (and of course, all of their attendant constituencies = us) around the globe.
A sad taste of the destructive ripple:
People have always wanted to be the exception. To not, as someone recently said, “be average” but to be “above average.” This means timing the markets. Escaping risks that, while explained to you, don’t really apply to you. This is not new. But, what has changed is the scope and the degree of interdependence that results from this behavior.
Time for financial literacy to get sexy!
Today The Economist officially endorsed Barack Obama as President of the United States.
The endorsement touches on a number of factors which led to my own transformation, but of course, elaborates on them more eloquently because, well, it’s The Economist.
A choice excerpt reminds me of one of my key (and favorite) posts illustrating my fitful morphing from McCain-to-Obama:
If only the real John McCain had been running
That, however, was Senator McCain; the Candidate McCain of the past six months has too often seemed the victim of political sorcery, his good features magically inverted, his bad ones exaggerated. The fiscal conservative who once tackled Mr Bush over his unaffordable tax cuts now proposes not just to keep the cuts, but to deepen them. The man who denounced the religious right as “agents of intolerance” now embraces theocratic culture warriors. The campaigner against ethanol subsidies (who had a better record on global warming than most Democrats) came out in favour of a petrol-tax holiday.
The stars keep aligning. What options are left for us to sabotage ourselves now?