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Dumbest business moments

This is pretty entertaining/revealing. Fortune has a list of the dumbest moves in business for 2009. There’ve been a lot of them, and the year’s only half-over.

Here’s my take on some of the lowlights:

The SEC bars Bernie Madoff from trading securities, in mid-June. Yes, that means two weeks ago.

The stress tests. We were all so relieved to hear, in May, that the banks will be fine under adverse conditions. Adverse being 8.9% unemployment. We’re at 9.4% now.

Treasury Secretary Tim Geither tells a Chinese audience their investments in the US are very safe. The audience burst out laughing.

Apple offers a game called Baby Shaker — “See how long you can endure his or her adorable cries before you just have to find a way to quiet the baby down,” the instructions read.

President Obama makes a big deal out of asking agencies to cut a total of $100 million from their budgets. That would reduce the projected deficit by .005%.

British Airways offers an “unpaid work option”. Yes, that means, “do you mind working for free for a little while?”

Tropicana changes its packaging and gets swamped by angry customers. Apparently, the new design (on the right) reminded people too much of generic orange juice. I don’t know. I just have a thing for branding horror stories:

• Jul 1, 2009 9:24 AM — Scott Jagow
• 5 comments