1. Sit.

2. Check your BlackBerry, but never when someone superior to you in the pecking order is speaking.

3. Draw on the pad provided on the corporation for your take-away.

4. Go to the bathroom, but never while someone on a higher branch of the corporate tree is tossing apples down from his or her great altitude.

5. Eat and Drink. Food will be provided at certain times, and coffee, cookies and berries at other times. Do not eat throughout the day. This will make you feel sick by 2 PM. And watch out for too much coffee, which can produce a variety of bad behaviors over the course of an entire 8-hour session, depredations ranging from overly-aggressive posturing to psychotic need to get out of the room and use the facilities to an extent that is inappropriate and noticeable.

6. Present findings. At some point, presumably, you will have to provide a reason for those in the room explaining why you are there. If you are senior enough, no such rationale is necessary, of course, but for many this will mean taking the floor for a time. So always go into these things with a small agenda for yourself and make sure it gets played out, even if it’s not germane or useful to the rest of the gathering.

7. Feign interest. Options include: nodding, assiduous and ostentatious note-taking, occasional exclamations and eye contact with others.

8. Avoid sleep. This is more difficult than it looks for some of us afflicted with meeting narcolepsy. Solutions include: a sharp pencil in the palm (if overdone, can lead to blood poisoning, which is certainly not sleep but should probably be avoided), the drinking of beverages both hot and cold, the acquiring of foodstuffs and/or implements, strolling around thoughtfully, leaving the room while glaring at one’s BlackBerry to simulate crisis mode, even, when all else fails, light dozing with one’s eyes open, a skill that is mastered only by those with long tenure in the realms of gray.

9. Entertaining use of wireless communication. Many is the long meeting these days that is lightened by continuous passing of digital “notes” to guys in the room as frizzed out and bored as you are. Dangers abound, however. Particularly to be avoided is joke-related sniggering while deplorable financial performance is being discussed by the CFO.

10. Hobnobbing. During breaks, you may have the opportunity to rub shoulders with guys you rarely see outside of these things. Don’t forget to do so. These interchanges may in fact be the actual purpose of the meeting. All day-long sessions have a subcutaneous reason for being — team-building and camaraderie. So laugh and scratch with the boys and girls. You may make a friend. And you know what those are worth these days.

11. Do breathing and stretching exercises. This may include extending your foot to touch that of your neighbor, but only if she is very cute and at least on the same pay and grade level that you are.

12. Collect ALL your “notes,” that is, sketches, rude graffiti, inelegant detritus, etc. NEVER leave your space festooned with evidence of what you were actually doing during the time allotted. I’ve seen quite a few people wrecked after leaving behind a scrap of paper featuring a hilarious and derisive a doodle of the chairman, complete with horns and drooling fangs. People get childish after a while, even at such serious and essential events. Leave no evidence of your inner child behind.

NEW YORK, April 29, 2008: Observers of the business scene were aghast today, when it appeared there was in fact no breaking news to fill the pipeline. “There’s news,” said one analyst who declined to be named because he was unauthorized to speak by his senior management, which is now considered an adequate source by most of the print media. “But it’s not really breaking. It may be doing other things. But breaking? No.”

A quick scan of the headlines revealed the unique situation. Stories covered as if they were breaking by a variety of media outlets included:

• Foreclosures rocketing up more than 100%;
• American Airlines losing millions of dollars a day;
• Mars buying Wrigley for $23 billion;
• Fed expected to lower rates again;
• Oil down a bit on easing of supply;

“Each of these events, while interesting, cannot really be classified as ‘breaking news’ per se,” said P. Spagnold Verbalot, the media pundit best known for being a media pundit. “Take the news on foreclosures, for instance,” he continued. “That’s really not breaking. It’s sort of seeping out and collecting in a gooey mass around our feet. And American Airlines (AMR)? It’s been losing money just about every day for a long time. The fact that somebody estimated the loss may be news of some sort, but not breaking news, possibly cracking, or rumbling, but breaking, I think not.”

Similarly, analysts analyzing the paucity of analyzable material opined that while Mars purchasing Wrigley (WWY) is in fact news, it was reported yesterday, when it actually “broke,” making today’s coverage simply that — coverage of information previously noted, with some augmentation of data to fill up space that would, in happier times, be dedicated to advertising. The same could be said for the rest of today’s reported news both in the political, financial and lifestyle arenas, where much was written about, but little enjoyed genuine breakage.

“We’re hoping for a better day tomorrow,” said a spokesman for the American Society of Journalists Exhausted by the Incessant Need to Fabricate Breaking Stories (ASJEINFBS), “but it’s difficult to predict when anything is going to break again. We’re hopeful, though. And pretty good at doing it the other way.”

Good morning. Happy Monday.

Okay, enough with the niceties. We begin our week with a tiny bit of paranoia offered by G of San Diego, who was trolling back in old Bing Blogs (get a life, dude!) and found something additional in what we might learn from the current crisis (as I saw it last August, when things were so much merrier, and we weren’t all sitting around waiting for the final quarter-point cut from BenCo).

It has to do with gas prices. This past weekend, I was in the Bay Area near San Francisco, and Regular was going for around $4.00 a gallon. I saw Premium for as high as $4.29.  Amazing sight to somebody who once used to get Merit for 23-cents a gallon — and I’m young, I tell you. Young!

As always, the gas is higher in affluent areas, which might make a person cynical if they didn’t believe in the fairness and probity of fuel companies and the Feds who oversee their evergreen efforts. They tell me that gas prices are still low in Texas, so that’s something.

At least, one would hope, you get your $4.29-worth when you sidle up to the fuel dispenser.  But this note from G  suggests otherwise. I don’t know about the accuracy and fairness of his or her research (there is no discernible gender to the letter G), but it seems worth passing along…

“The Gasoline Octane and how they are ripping off consumers per-gallon, and they can’t even see it happening to them,” G writes, searching for a subject and verb. He continues…

“As a consumer you should be aware of the following when purchasing a “Octane price” of gasoline in San Diego, CA.

Note
92- $4.12 /gallon
87- $4.09/gallon
84- $3.50/gallon

However, after filling three test gas bottles with different octanes of gasoline - 92, 89 and 84 - and after testing each octane with a octane tester, we found that most of the octanes of each gasoline were marked with the wrong octane of the gasoline, [which] was found to only to have a 87 Octane reading gasoline at some gas stations.

Most of these readings were tested more than three times…

What we have found… we paid $4.12 for something that was only worth the price of 84 octane fuel, which should of been only $3.50. In truth it showed a loss of 62 cent per gallon. As for the loss of a 20 gallon fill up, I lost a whopping $12.40.

Now I am thinking of hiring some consumer affairs attorneys to file a lawsuit on three gasoline companies for my losses since the the gas crisis started. Any Ideas of any attorneys that want to go up against three major gasoline companies?

I am happy to say that I know no such attorneys. I am, however, interested in the topic as a consumer.

Is this an urban legend? Could some small part of it be true? Is it a local gas-station issue, or something being foisted upon us as a gigantic corporate trend? Or is little G giving the big G gas companies a bum rap?

Anybody out there have a clue? If so, pump it up the pipeline, will ya?

We’re all drinking a lot less for business reasons now, because… well, I don’t really know why. We just are. You go to lunch and a proud phalanx of sparkling water bottles festoons the room, and everybody is munching on salads like giraffes. This is sad for two reasons. First, sobriety is not a congenial condition in which to do serious business, and second, this leaves far more drinking to be done on personal time. As far as I’m concerned, this is ass-backwards. There are solid reasons why the majority of imbibing should be done on company time.

Here, in my view, are the excellent functions alcohol provides within a business context:

1. Grease the wheels: It is a well-known fact that growth rates have plummeted since we all stopped drinking at meals, particularly breakfast and lunch. In the 1980s, many a fine deal was hammered out while we were.
2. Builds friendships that last a lifetime: How many of us are really interested in the stuff that our peers are involved in? My pal builds boats. Do I care about boats? I assure you I don’t. I, on the other hand, collect ancient guitars that once sold in Montgomery-Ward for $2.99. Does he have the slightest interest in that? But put us together with a couple of beers, three or four scotches and a few after dinner drinks and I assure you we love each other, and have for almost 20 years now.
3. Makes golf possible: Think of what that stupid game would be like if we didn’t have booze before, during and after it?
4. Meeting facilitator: Okay, you don’t need a couple of stiff ones to survive a two-hour meeting with PowerPoint. But these all-day things they put us through a couple of times a year at least, or the annual squeeze-fest with 300 senior managers in Boca? Without booze? You sit in those things and the martini in your mind coalesces at about 10 AM and stays there all day, a beacon of hope amid the gloom and forced collegiality.
5. All-purpose topic of conversation: The tedious things that business people talk about! Lord! Interest rates! GAAP. Monetizing prospective revenue streams! Phooey! But when the conversation moves around to wine? Or single malt scotches? Or what booze goes well with mongoosse? Everybody’s an expert in one way or another, and even those who are not can quietly watch the blowhards blow while tending to an aggressive cab with a big nose and huge shoulders.
6. Anesthetic: As we get on in years, or engage in sports no human was ever meant to pursue, our bodies begin to attack us. Shoulders ache from improper employment of a 9-iron. Elbows throb from repetitive tennis activity. Me, I’ve been wracked with some kind of back pain brought on by over-use of my mouse. You could take percodan and blow up like the Hindenburg, like Jerry Lewis did, or blow your mind on other crazy substances now popular in Los Angeles, but a warm glass of gin never met an ailment it couldn’t soothe. A few weeks ago, a small flagon of warm port cured my flu. I report that fact now in hopes it will be picked up by medical authorities and pursued with responsible vigor.
7. Sleeping potion: Right after that, I fell asleep, by the way. True, those who use booze for this purpose are likely to awaken at 3 AM when its effects wear off. This is different than the usual waking at 3 AM, which I do every night anyway. In the latter case, it’s harder to fall back asleep.
8. Excuse: You can’t do it too often, of course. You get a reputation for yourself that can make people doubt your stamina and probity. Unless, of course, it’s a recourse shared by your entire corporate culture. Which is probably why I miss all the guys I came up with at Westinghouse.

Hi, guys! Remember the good old days? On second thought, I bet you don’t!

As any reader of this space may be able to tell by now, I’m a big fan of bailouts. Some believe that the markets should go through the pain of what they have wrought on themselves in order to come out the other side cleaner, stronger, faster. Not me. If there’s an easy way out, I’m for it.

I liked it years ago, when they bailed out Chrysler. And when the S&Ls needed help? That was a terrific one, wasn’t it? Countrywide (CFC)? Same deal! Why not? And when BenCo moved to… I’m not sure “help” is the right word… whatever they did to Bear Stearns (BSC), I was all for it, too.

Coming up, if and when Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE) sink to their pretty knees under the weight of all those loan guarantees, I’ll be right there to support the first trillion dollar bailout ever! A new record — until the next one.

The tsunami of assistance being offered to institutions large and small is always explicated in the same terms: This is the way that the larger eco-system can make sure that smaller fry aren’t destroyed when the big fish get caught in the net of destruction. By helping the large, we are protecting the small. Right. I get that.

Destruction is never the best option, even if comfortable and sometimes nasty people prescribe it for the good of the system. If stuff can be saved with money, well, that’s what money is for, I think. This is possibly why, when I’m personally depressed, I always help my emotional infrastructure with the expenditure of disposable income. This in turn improves the economy and creates the need for new mercantile establishments, like the Container Store, to contain my effluvia. Money may not be able to buy happiness permanently, but as a short term solution to all kinds of problems it really can’t be beat.

This emphasis on top-down help, however, does have its limits if you look at it hard enough. Why are the big always propped up when the small are allowed to get flushed into the drink? Those who raise such questions are often accused of naivete, which is to be distinguished from the outright stupidity that smart people seem to have suffered while creating our current debacle. The risk managers, hedge fund moguls, debt-mongers and analysts may have been the idiots who got us into this. But they don’t stop giving advice, and they’re not naive enough to think that helping little folks can do anything to protect their packages.

This is why it’s refreshing to see someone who has some success in the financial arena articulate what to many might seem a simple, naive and hopelessly humanistic idea. Enter George Soros, cited in the May 15 edition of the New York Review of Books.  Here’s what the always opinionated and controversial Mr. Soros had to say when Ms. Woodruff asked him how long the housing crisis was going to last:

“Well, it depends on when the authorities wake up, because you need to reduce the number of foreclosures. You need to keep as many people as possible in their houses so that they don’t come onto the market. You need to arrest the decline in house prices, but you also need to prevent human suffering and social disruption because it’s going to be very, very severe. Certain communities are already hurting and it’s going to get a lot worse. So action will have to be taken, but I don’t think it’s going to happen during this administration.”

Wow. Preventing suffering. Keeping people in their homes. Trying to work from the bottom up to save the system from the mistakes of its proprietors?

Nah. Not this gang.

Let’s just bail out another big loser, shall we?

Have you ever noticed that the rudest people are often the most touchy about any slight to THEM?

This is an executive trait, of course. People who feel particularly comfortable yelling at others, but whose feelings are incredibly sensitive to any kind of slight. I once knew a guy who routinely screamed his head off at the slightest provocation. The entire corporation tiptoed around his temper. One day one of his lieutenants flew into Chicago from Denver for a meeting and was greeted with a faceful of noise from the big cheese.

Tired, jet-lagged, upset at being gored so early in his visit and without even the faux-polite preamble often afforded visiting dignitaries, the sub-executive exploded at the boss. The content of his diatribe is unimportant. He just blew a gasket, got red in the face, and expelled fumes at his vast and powerful superior. Then he left and went back to his visiting office, fully expecting to be decapitated.

He was not. In fact, he was never punished. For the rest of the day, the CEO was very quiet in his corner space, which was roughly the size of Soldier Field. Every now and then he would call an associate and, in a hurt tone of voice, say, “Barry yelled at me.” When asked what the heck he was talking about, he would simply reaffirm, in a voice as tender as a grass-fed steer, “Barry yelled at me. I brought up the current performance of his division and he completely went off on me. I’m the CEO. And he yelled at me.” Those who received such calls claim there was even a bubble of tears behind the boss’s quiet and injured tone. But that seems impossible. CEOs don’t cry, do they?

I bring all this up in order to relate a brief anecdote that occurred to me personally yesterday evening, one that made me consider this issue in light of my ongoing study of executive malfeasance, obnoxiousness and dementia.

I was at the fish counter of my local supermarket. There was a long line and nobody was being served. The line grew. The fish guy was busy, his back to us, deboning a plank of salmon. Finally, he finished his job, turned to all of us, and began serving each, one by one. As he was about to wrap my order, a woman with wild hair came up beside me, saw what was going on, and screamed at him in a shrill peal that cut through the quiet store like a buzzsaw: “What are you doing? Where is my order!?”

“I was deboning it and now all I have to do is wrap it up,” said the fish guy.

“You’re serving other people!” she yelled, impervious to the curious gazes of all of the “other people” who were now looking at her with amazement and something approaching fear. Madness in others is scary. “You haven’t completed my order and YOU ARE SERVING OTHER PEOPLE! Stop!”

“Okay, okay,” said the pescatorial server. “I’m sorry.”

“I have places to go! I have things to do! I can’t wait here all day!” Interesting, I thought. The fact that she was getting her way wasn’t appeasing her at all. “Serving other people before my order was done!” she continued. I could feel her red face behind me, even though I wasn’t turning to look at her. “I just think that’s SO RUDE! You owe me some kind of APOLOGY!”

“Sorry, lady,” said the fish guy.

We “other people” just looked at each other. Nobody said anything. The woman got her fish and, without a word of thanks, left. An air of calm and relief settled over us.

“Who’s next?” said the guy.

“I believe you were about to wrap that salmon,” I said. “But take your time.”

I woke up yesterday morning and found myself paralyzed. I lay in bed and couldn’t move. I didn’t even know what I was worried about, I was so worried. Eventually, I got myself up, shaved with trembling hands, and made my way to the office. I got to my desk and read the headlines. Then I really couldn’t move.

 A steely hand wrapped its skeletal fingers around my windpipe and would not let go. “Eek,” I said, since it was the only thing that would emerge from my ratcheted esophagus.

All day yesterday I sat here in a cold sweat. Now I figure, what the hey. I can’t be like this forever. Perhaps if I articulate what’s got me so freaky-deaky, it will pass. Or not. Either way, it’ll be better than this emotional and professional rictus.

Here’s my list:

1. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. I never really even knew how important Fannie and Freddie were, but their collapse, or even, like, if they got a cold, would possibly force the Federal Government to lose its credit rating. Think about that for a minute. No, on second thought, don’t.
2. The Bank of America: (BOA) Earnings were down. More losses are being reserved against. Deeply disquieting.
3. Other banks. We all saw what happened to Bear Stearns (BS) in two or three days. Once the whispering campaign got started, their goose was cooked. Now every day I hear from the newspapers and the online writers and the bloggers and the guys getting soup across the street and nobody has a single thing to say except, “What’s up with that billion/trillion/gazillion dollar bailout?!” How long before we all make it happen?
4. Saturated fat: Up until recently, I was pretty much saturated with fat. Now I’m less saturated, but I’m not completely unsaturated yet and I get a sense that if I don’t get there soon I may not have much longer to try. I got some ideas from Michael Pollan’s excellent book, In Defense of Food, which basically says we should “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” It’s sort of working, except I’m still working out whether vodka can be considered a food. What do you think?
5. Global warming: I don’t worry about it as much as I used to, because I have replaced 20% of my concern in this area with anxiety about Freddie and Fannie. I only have just so much capacity to freak out and then even I run out of resources.
6. Google (GOOG): I feel a little bit better now that their earnings were so impressive. But consider. If Google stops being the outer skin of the balloon, what else do we have to be inflated about? Things that have sort of gone by the wayside as a source of hysteria include: alternative energy sources, recombinant DNA therapy, cloning, robots, nanotech. We all need something to believe in, future-wise. What’s that gonna be?
7. Ben Bernanke: What’s he do for fun? What’s it like to be Ben? When you have a glass of wine at a party and Maria Bartiromo says, “How ya doin’?” do you have to think, “What will the impact be of my statement to Maria here, when all I’m really trying to do is get a smile out of her?”
8. China: Forget all the dubious stuff now under scrutiny from the nation, its army, arms dealers and toothpaste and heparin manufacturers. How about the reaction of the Chinese themselves to people and organizations that express opposition or even mild criticism of their various ventures? Boycotts! Censure! No more business for you! Sure, that’s their right, but a worldwide economic war between China and its allies and everybody else would be something to keep us all up at night.
9. The dollar: I can say no more.
10. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac again. The article raises the specter of a trillion dollar buyout, which might drive the credit rating of our nation itself down a notch or even two. The pundits in the posting do say that such a thing is unlikely. But if it’s so unlikely, why mention it? Why scare everybody? When one knows the power of even the slightest negative wind to move markets and crash enormous battleships of enterprise? Why bring it up? Why put a headline on it? Why publish it at the top of the page?

You know what? When bad stuff happens, let me know. Until then, I’m going to try to remember some things: It’s spring. We’re alive. And bonds are still doing okay. I think.

Just a short note today because I’m a little worried about myself. I wonder if you guys out there can figure out this phalanx of symptoms:

• Overall tightness in my neck and upper back;
• Achy elbows, particularly my right one;
• Pain that radiates from my elbows up my arm and downward into my forearms;
• Pain increases the moment I try to push a mouse around;
• Pain begins when I start working my thumbs on my BlackBerry.

The horrifying thought has occurred to me that I have some computer and BlackBerry-related ailment that will cut down on my ability to spew out words and electronic messages without discomfort.

Have I worn out the nerves that run from my neck into my arms? Is this all in my head? What if a person becomes incapacitated not by a work-related accident or a vehicular incident, but is wrecked by the continuous on-the-job usage of muscles and nerves that were never intended to be utilized with the frequency and intensity to which we put them? Do these symptoms ring a bell with any of you?

Is there a doctor in the house? And… on you are my plan?