Dumb & Dumber: Twitter, Baby Formula, and The Ministry of Truth
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Okay, enough of that. Sheesh.
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I haven’t been keeping everyone as informed as I should be. Dumb & Dumber took a short break during Financial Literacy Month, and that may have been a mistake. I let too much fiscal foolery fall under the radar, but no more!
Let’s take a look at the latest maddening money moves.
DUMB — Boeing Gets an Earful
People used to say, “If it ain’t Boeing, I ain’t going.”
Well, Boeing ain’t going much of anywhere lately, despite a much needed boost this week from the parent company of British Airways, which ordered 50 aircraft, giving Boeing’s sluggish shares some wind beneath their wings.
But one of Boeing’s biggest customers is still waiting for planes it expected by the end of April, and its CEO let loose an obscenity-laced rant on a call with stock analysts this week.
Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary said Boeing management needs to “get their sh*t together.” He‘s furious that his planes haven’t arrived, forcing the discount airliner to cancel hundreds of thousands of fares in May and June.
An unimpressed Michael O’Leary/Horacio Villalobos/Getty Images
O’Leary says that while Ryanair only ordered the 737 MAX aircraft last month, the planes were already built for a previous customer who canceled. This wasn’t a supply chain issue. “All you had to do is put petrol in them and f***ing fly them to Dublin, really, I don’t understand why you are taking two- or three-month delays on that.” Boeing hasn’t commented.
Hear the full rant in this story from Quartz. Warning: there are several f-bombs, including O’Leary suggesting that the Boeing sales team is working from home in their “f-ing jim-jams.”
DUMBER — Another Billionaire, Another Lobbyist Lawsuit
When your billionaire buddy is elected to the most powerful position on the planet, you may think you can continue business as usual with him. You can’t. There are rules. Rules that even apply to billionaires. Or at least two of them.
Billionaire #1: Tom Barrack is awaiting trial on charges that he tried to score business deals worth millions of dollars in the United Arab Emirates at the same time he was illegally lobbying Donald Trump on the UAE’s behalf. New allegations this week claim Barrack lied to cover up his role facilitating two phone calls between Emirates officials and then President-elect Trump.
Barrack has pleaded not guilty.
Billionaire #2: Steve Wynn faces five years in prison if convicted of jawboning the former President in 2017 on behalf of China without registering as a foreign agent for the Xi regime.
Steve Wynn/Jason LaVeris/Getty Images
Years earlier, when Wynn was still running Wynn Resorts — and before he resigned over allegations of years of sexually inappropriate behavior — he used to say that then President Barack Obama was ruining the country, while the Chinese knew how to do business. Here he is in 2014 telling me he’s more scared of the U.S. than China, and that the Chinese people trust their government.
Now the Justice Department claims that after Trump won the White House in 2016, Wynn was contacted by intermediaries for China’s ruling party who asked him to urge the president to deport a Chinese billionaire businessman seeking asylum in the United States. The businessman is unnamed, but the New York Times reports he fits the description of Guo Wengui, a controversial figure who has been critical of Xi Jinping and who fled China in 2014 ahead of corruption charges. (He later formed a partnership with former Trump strategist Steve Bannon.)
Wynn (allegedly) suggested that the President let the man’s visa expire, and he also (allegedly) gave Trump photos of the guy. Nice, right?
Wynn’s lawyers say the whole thing is preposterous and that Steve Wynn never worked on behalf of the Chinese. But the indictment lays out several instances over the summer of 2017 when Wynn repeatedly met with Trump and administration officials to (allegedly) discuss the asylum-seeker.
Now, it’s possible that Wynn and Barrack are victims of a Biden-era witch hunt to go after Trump’s rich friends. However, if Wynn did, in fact, push to deport a guy critical of the Chinese, I guess that’s the kind of trustworthy government he’s come to admire.
By the way, the plan didn’t work. The guy was never sent home.
Speaking of billionaires…
DUMBERER — Elon v. Twitter
Wow. Wowwww.
Hard to pick a side. Each has dumbness on its hands.
Elon Musk said he wanted to buy Twitter, met with Twitter executives for three days, admitted he didn’t do much due diligence, made a $44 billion offer, and now he’s rethinking the entire purchase.
He’s questioning Twitter’s claim that fewer than 5% of its accounts are spam.
CEO Parag Agrawal tweeted that the 5% figure is accurate to the best of his knowledge, and that the company takes down a half-million fake accounts a day. Elon thinks the number of spam accounts is above 20% (he hasn’t offered proof), and he replied to Agrawal’s lengthy explanation with a poop emoji.
I feel like Elon’s the guy who proposes marriage to a woman he can’t get enough of, then spends more time trying to convince everyone he can afford her rather than checking into whether she’s worth it, and now he’s looking for excuses to break it off. Tesla shareholders clearly don’t like him being distracted (the stock is down 30% since he announced his intentions to marry Twitter and use Tesla shares as dowry). This may be contributing to his cold feet.
Of course, the more bad press Elon can create through tweets, the lower the share price for Twitter, the more leverage he has to renegotiate!
On the other hand…
The self-righteous hand-wringing by Twitter employees makes me root for Elon! And does anyone really think that only 5% of accounts are fake? If the figure is higher, Twitter could be accused of defrauding investors about the success of its business. Shocking!
Bottom line: The Wall Street Journal reports that Elon can’t just pay his $1 billion breakup fee and walk away from the deal. His agreement with Twitter allows the company to sue if he doesn’t follow through with the purchase! Man, what was he smoking the day he agreed to that?
Runner-Up: Tough Talk is Contagious
Elon says whatever he wants, and it’s catching on with the second richest person in the world. Jeff Bezos took to Twitter (naturally) to feud with President Biden after the President suggested one way to fight inflation is to “make sure the wealthiest corporations pay their fair share.” Fair share of what? Taxes? Wages? Gee, that might lead to more… inflation!
Bezos went on offense:
Bezos is right, but he’s no Musk; there are no fanboys for Amazon’s space cowboy. And publicly defending billionaires and their companies is usually not a winning strategy. But he can console himself with this: The more Elon tweets, the more his net worth falls, and soon Jeff could be back on top!
DUMBERERER — TikTok Truth Czar Resigns
2022 is the new 1984, as Bezos noted (above). The Ministry of Truth — I mean, the “Disinformation Governance Board” — was created last month within the Department of Homeland Security to fight misinformation about things like what’s happening at the southern border. Usually, in a democracy, that job would be left to a free and independent press (oh, wait…). But after DHS realized that America is not North Korea, the board was put on hold and its director resigned.
The now-former director, Nina Jankowicz, says she’s been receiving serious threats by far-right nut jobs, and I’m sure that’s true. It’s crazytime in America. But this ignores the fact that the board was a terribly un-American idea and an outrageous use of taxpayer dollars.
Jankowicz was rightfully mocked for this TikTok video defining disinformation to the tune of “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious“:
Um-diddle-diddle-um-diddleye, that was the person put in charge of the government’s Truth Police. She’d also been known to spread a little disinformation herself:
This dumb idea was made even dumber by the excuses given for putting the board on hold. The Washington Post (owned by Jeff Bezos) screamed, “How the Biden administration let right-wing attacks derail its disinformation efforts” (I guess “Democracy Dies in a Disinformation Board”). Do they mean the right-wing attack from the ACLU?
Nut jobs aside, with an election coming up, someone in the Biden administration must have noticed that millions of rational Americans are troubled by this.
QUICK HITS:
— CNN accidentally sent welcome baskets to employees it just fired. The Wall Street Journal reports that some baskets included heartfelt notes, like, “It’s an incredible time to be part of CNN.”
— The state of Washington’s ferry service significantly cut back service last fall, claiming it was due to a “global shortage of mariners.” This created a mess for those who depend on the ferries. However, the Washington Policy Center, a free-market think tank, found emails suggesting Washington’s DOT concocted the “shortage” to cover up the real reason for the cuts — anticipated disruptions expected from the imminent mass-firing of 400 employees who'd refused the Covid vaccine.
— Matt Damon continues to be reamed for his crypto commercial. Now he’s gotten the ”South Park” treatment.
— An $1,100 Gucci/Adidas umbrella doesn’t protect you from the rain, and it was never meant to.
— Two guys who weren’t qualified to fly a corporate jet (one had his license revoked two years earlier) aborted takeoff with five people on board. The jet was 3,000 pounds too heavy, and it skidded to a stop off the runway, shearing off the landing gear and causing a large fuel spill. Everyone lived, thankfully, but the aircraft’s owners expected insurance to cover the damage. WRONG!
DUMBEST — The Infant Formula Debacle
Holy cow. Thank GOD I don’t have a baby who needs formula. What a disaster. But for all the finger-pointing at Abbott Labs and a possible link between its formula and the deaths of two infants, this is a problem created by our government.
For starters, then-President Trump initiated sharp tariffs on imported formula to protect America’s dairy industry and encourage more domestic production, yet the expected onshoring of American-made formula didn’t happen. Why?
Well, according to the Wall Street Journal, the USDA believes as much as two-thirds of formula sold in the U.S. comes through government vouchers to low-income mothers, and companies like Abbott compete for these contracts by offering steep discounts. This allows them to become de facto suppliers to ALL formula-buying mothers, discouraging new competition. Who wants to break into a market where there are only a few players who land government contracts by offering ridiculously unprofitable rebates?
Second, WTF with the FDA? Contamination was detected at the Michigan Abbott plant last September, and a whistleblower came forward with new allegations in October. But as Bloomberg reports, the FDA didn’t do anything for months.
So we’re left with a non-competitive industry run by an inefficient agency and faced with steep barriers to entry which make it difficult to import formula from shady countries like (checks notes)… Canada and Switzerland.
Fortunately the prospect of starving babies and desperate parents — in the United States of America — finally woke up Washington, and some barriers are being suspended.
I’m wondering how quickly politicians and bureaucrats would’ve acted if there was a shortage of, say, Viagra.
DUMB… But Wonderful
I like to leave you laughing, and this made me howl.
It’s that time of year when students rate their professors, and here’s a sampling of negative reviews for a teacher named Jesus of Nazareth.
One of my favorites:
“I reached out because I needed an extremely important, last-minute letter of rec for a summer internship. He didn’t get back to me for three days. Do your job.”
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I know there’s plenty of bad business moves I’ve left out, so let me know if there’s been an egregious omission. Join the discussion with a comment, or shoot me an email at jane@janewells.com.