Oh, What a feeling!

Oh, What a feeling! ...a famous Toyota tag line in the 1980s Toyota commercials.

Toyota reported today that it expects a net loss of 350 billion yen ($3.85 billion) for the fiscal year through March -- a stunning reversal from the record 1.72 trillion yen profit it posted the previous year. (AP)

Sharp, one of Japan’s largest electronics companies, said it will make its first operating loss as a listed company in the year to March.The company cut its forecast from an operating profit of Y130bn to an operating loss of Y30bn, and also expects a net loss of Y100bn.The forecast figures highlight the depth of the downturn that has hit Japan’s electronics companies. Sony, Panasonic, Toshiba, NEC and Hitachi have all said that they will lose hundreds of billions of yen this fiscal year.

Key sectors of the Indian economy shed half a million jobs in the final three months of last year as the global slowdown took its toll on one of the world’s fastest growing big economies.A survey of employment across seven sectors by the Ministry of Labour showed job losses in mining, textiles, carmaking, transport, metals, gems and jewellery and back office process outsourcing. Employment of contract workers in the motor industry alone fell 12.5 per cent during the period as demand slowed and the liquidity crisis shortcircuited demand in the global economy. But the report showed that the gems and jewellery sector, a usually strong export performer, was the hardest hit with a total fall of 9 per cent.Many additional jobs among contract and temporary staff, particularly in textiles, are likely to have gone unrecorded. Workers in many industries are being encouraged to take pay cuts and work longer hours to save their jobs.

More than 20m rural migrant workers in China have lost their jobs and returned to their home villages or towns as a result of the global economic crisis, government figures revealed on Monday.By the start of the Chinese new year festival on January 25, 15.3 per cent of China’s 130m migrant workers had lost their jobs and left coastal manufacturing centres to return home, said officials quoting a survey from the agriculture ministry.The job losses were a direct result of the global economic crisis and its impact on export-oriented manufacturers, said Chen Xiwen, director of the Office of Central Rural Work Leading Group. He warned that the flood of unemployed migrants would pose challenges to social stability in the countryside.The figure of 20m unemployed migrants does not include those who have stayed in cities to look for work after being made redundant and is substantially higher than the figure of 12m that Wen Jiabao, premier, gave to the Financial Times in an interview on Sunday. Speaking on a visit to the UK on Monday, Mr Wen said there had been signs at the end of last year the Chinese economy might be starting to recover.

Moral of the story: When irresponsible behavior spreads like a contagion, and the sane people do not protest, everyone suffers.

U.S. Media's Olympic Math: 1 Gold = 1 Silver = 1 Bronze

Price per Oz, as of 8/22/2008
Gold: $ 827.40
Silver: $ 13.48
Bronze: $ 0.50 to $0.75

When one looks at the Olympics medals tally at yahoo.com , she finds the Medals Count with US on top (107), followed by China (96) and Russia (69). All data as of 9 PM 8/23/2008.
NYT has the same data, ranking the countries in the same order.
WSJ has similar rankings.

Adding the number of gold, silver and bronze medals to come up with the 'total' does not "add up" as it is beyond logic, and is equivalent to adding blackberries, bananas and grapes.

What is rather dubious and self-congratulatory about this is that China has 49 gold medals, followed by US (34) and Russia (22). While there are no established equivalencies or conversion rates between the medals, if one considers the market value of the metals a gold medal is worth 61 times the value of a silver medal, and more than a 1000 times that of bronze. It is rather transparent that China is WAY AHEAD of other countries in the overall "medals" in the Olympics. Why are the news media resorting to this deliberate distortion in portraying the "Olympic" medals performance? It is precisely this behavior that encourages jingoist behavior and ignorance and then hatred of other countries and cultures. In other countries, the media rank nations on their gold medal performances. One can look at BBC's medals tally, as an example. FT.com also has an interesting outsider perspective on this phenomenon of self aggrandizement- see Outside Edge: Fool’s gold consoles unloved America.

Your choice: "Humans-Eat-Dogs World" (China) or "Humans-Share-Dogs World" (US/Europe)

Over the years my marketing students have come up with a number of innovative ideas and business models. Some of these have been turned into real products and/or services- very gratifying for a professor. Examples include an indoor Laser Tag arena and efficiently routed school buses for our College. One of my favorites is the 'Bow Wow Doggy Day Care" services firm, an idea my students came up with long before the concept became mainstream.

I was reflecting on this as I read the article "An Idea Whose Time Has Come: The Time-Share Dog Monica Had 2 Families, 2 Names, Much Love; Boston Bans Short Pooch Leases" in today's WSJ. My mind turned to the accounting aspect of this concept.

• Shared Capital Asset. It appears that for some people a dog is just a capital asset- something whose ownership can be divided up across multiple owners. As an asset it can be traded, and eventually "disposed off" for its salvage value
• Lease with an option to buy. The article cites examples of people who took out dogs on the "short-term" plan and liked them so much they kept them for the long term. This appears to be akin to the dating game- only the counter-party (the dog) has no say in the matter
• A 'contract' worker doing all the work a regular employee does...the problem that companies like Microsoft and FedEx ran into. In this case the 'shared' dog is expected to provide everything a 'fully owned' dog does to its owner, but the shared dog's contract can be 'terminated at will without any due compensation.'

While the discussion is about dogs, the concept can be extended to other pets as well.

Of course, for an even more tasty bite - a few weeks ago, the Chinese government banned dog meat at its 112 official Olympic restaurants. This was done in order to avoid offending the fine sensibilities of the visitors.

Just one more illustration of the premise that the humans mind can scale the highest peaks and sink to the lowest depths. Doggone it!