Fake Rolex® watches, knock-off Armani® handbags, counterfeit Nike® shoes, pirated movies of all sorts—if you’ve traveled to any countries that have lax trademark, patent, and copyright protection, you’ve seen plenty of faked goods. It’s pathetic, to say the least. The companies that make the original item lose out on sales, and risk losing some credibility because poor-quality copies are detrimental to the company’s image. Depending on the product, consumers put themselves at risk. Finally, at the risk of sounding overly righteous, the companies that make the counterfeits are just taking the lazy way out, rather than innovating to develop new products or improve existing ones. If everyone took the easy way out, we’d have never innovated our way out of the Stone Age. It’s hard to find a winner here. (more...)
Author Archive
A litany of amateur mistakes
By: Eric Lundin
At 7:03 pm on November 1, 1955, a DC-6B (United Airlines Flight 629) crashed near Longmont, Colorado. The Civil Aeronautics Board and the FBI carried out a comprehensive recovery effort, and eventually pieced together most of the airplane. The tail had severed off cleanly, and when engineers from United and the manufacturer, Douglas Aircraft Corp., offered no viable explanation, the FBI considered it an act of sabotage.
Exhaustive interviews with family, neighbors, and business associates of the passengers led the FBI to focus on Jack Gilbert Graham, whose mother was a passenger. Graham had a suspicious past to say the least. A restaurant owned by Graham’s mother, and managed by Graham, had once been damaged by an explosion; years earlier Graham had been convicted of forgery; and recently he had filed an insurance claim on a pickup truck that had stalled on a railroad track. He also had a motive; before the flight, Graham had taken out a life insurance policy on his mother.
Hands off the merchandise!
By: Eric Lundin
In early March, my colleague Vicki Bell wrote a blog about a common and highly dreaded problem these days: Metal theft. I am sure the main target is copper, which typically fetches more than $3.00 per pound (spot price), and it probably started with stealing plumbing pipe from abandoned buildings. Thieves have gotten bolder and, while the evidence is largely anecdotal, fully functional HVAC systems and other copper-rich items have become targets.
And the thieves have gotten bolder still. Vicki cited a specific instance at Metcam, metal fabricator based in Alpharetta, Ga. In this case, the suspect was loading sheets of metal into his truck and, when questioned by a deputy whether he had permission, he said, “I didn’t know I couldn’t do this.” Hiding behind a building, on private property, under cover of darkness, taking things that didn’t belong to him. And he didn’t know it was wrong. Bold. (more...)
The story behind the story
By: Eric Lundin
The latest big-picture economic assessment is out, and the headlines don’t tell a pretty story. As measured by gross domestic output (GDP), the U.S. economy contracted slightly during the final quarter of 2012. A surprise? Yes, even for many economists. A reflection of the national mood at the end of last year, when the fiscal cliff was looming? Probably. A cause for panic? No, even for most people in manufacturing. (more...)
The Stingray returns
By: Eric Lundin
A 6.2-liter engine, 450 horsepower, zero to 60 miles per hour in less than 4 seconds, and a redesigned exterior that exudes cool from bumper to bumper. It’s not a foreign car with a funny-sounding name and a price tag with as many digits as the federal debt. It’s a domestic model guaranteed to pry some respect, no matter how begrudgingly—and maybe some admiration—from even the most ardent Ford and Chrysler fanatics.
Yes, that’s right. It’s the car known for having fiberglass body panels.
It has been 60 years since General Motors rolled out its first Corvette. From a 2013 perspective, the 1953 model doesn’t look all that sporty, but if you put it up against the sedans of the day, it looks pretty good. Borrowing the name of a lightweight, maneuverable class of warship, GM gave it a moniker that would prove to be iconic and timeless. (more...)
We’ve all fallen off the fiscal cliff
By: Eric Lundin
If the headlines from a week ago are to be believed, Congress got its act together and cobbled together a last-minute deal to avoid sending the U.S. economy off the fiscal cliff. Needless to say, I don’t believe it. Yes, superficially, the new legislation prevented the U.S. economy from becoming the equivalent of a high-speed train wreck. However, it didn’t deal with the broad, deep, fundamental problems that are weakening the foundation of the U.S. economy. We have the same problems we had before this legislation passed, and the U.S. economy will eventually go off the rails. It won’t be sudden. It will play out like a painfully slow train wreck. Rather than a couple dozen freight cars piling up in a matter of seconds, it will take a decade or two, but it will happen nonetheless. (more...)
Labor strikes reveal strengths, weaknesses
By: Eric Lundin
In the end, the labor strike was just eight days long, but for the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, an eight-day strike idles a large number of workers and ties up a lot of cargo. The dispute largely centered around the alleged outsourcing of jobs, an accusation brought by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 63 Office Clerical Unit. (more...)
How black was Black Friday?
By: Eric Lundin
If you tend to avoid crowds, lines, and hassles, you probably spent Nov. 23, Black Friday, doing something other than shopping. And for good reason—the tales of pushing, shoving, and fighting seem to get worse every year.
On the other hand, if you wonder what consumers are up to, you probably pounced on the Black Friday details when they were released by the National Retail Federation®. Supposedly named for the start of the shopping season that pushes many retailers from red to black (loss to profit, a holdover from the days that accounting entries were rendered in red and black), the day's sales figures are considered a bellwether for the Christmas shopping season. (more...)
Another perfect storm
By: Eric Lundin
Much of the East Coast has been bracing itself for Hurricane Sandy while the rest of us wait and wonder. After developing on Oct. 22, it hit Jamaica, Cuba, and the Bahamas, and eventually became the largest recorded hurricane to roil the Atlantic, with a diameter approximately 1,000 miles. Described as a mega-storm by some, it has the potential to disrupt the lives of 60 million people in the U.S. along. That’s 20 percent of the U.S. population. Wow! (more...)
Jobless claims lowest since 2008 … now what?
By: Eric Lundin
In its weekly press release on Oct. 11, the U.S. Department of Labor reported that initial claims for unemployment insurance fell to 339,000 in the week that ended Oct. 6. This represents a one-week drop of 30,000 and the lowest number of initial claims since Feb. 2008. Of course this is good news, but how good is it? A little context might help clarify it. (more...)
