Bailout Problems, Narnia Killed, Holiday Sales, and Notebooks

The Rachel Maddow Bank - On her show yesterday, Rachel Maddow decided she needs to form a bank. She runs through the very simple application that is required for banks to get bailout money from the government that is so easy that a child could fill it out. Don't you wish it was that easy for you to get a loan from a bank? She then points out just how screwed up the whole thing is as banks refuse to say where the money is being spent and what plans they have for whatever money remains. And then there is the Auto industry. They had to go through some massive hoops to get their money, a fraction of what the banks got just by asking. Why the double standard? Why is the standard being forced on the Big Three not being forced on the banks? Shouldn't the banks be required to meet basic criteria, at the very least explain where the billions is going (I bet in friends and families pockets)? Basically, once again the Bush Administration dealt with a crisis in the only way it knows how - incompetently.


Disney Kills Narnia Franchise - Due to the "failure" of Prince Caspian not making as much money as the first movie, Disney has decided to not continue with the franchise. As the writer at the link points out, Disney has itself to blame for the failure of the movie. Instead of highlighting the known cast for the sequel, their campaign focused on a complete unknown holding a sword, not exactly a sign of family fare. Where the movie would have probably dominated the holidays, they decided to go for the greedy glut of summer where a lot of money can be made if a film hits but the heavy competition also means that a perfectly good movie can be lost in the noise and fail (see Star Trek next year for that occurrence to repeat). I also think they got cold feet as they realized trying to adapt all the remaining novels in an interesting way was a rather daunting task. Other then the Last Battle (everyone dies and goes to heaven), the remaining books are thin on action and heavy on exposition. Realistically the goal should have been to do combine many of the books into a prequel that tells the history of Narnia and essentially do a three or four part movie series and nothing more. Instead they thought mimicking Harry Potter's business plan was sufficient and paid the price.

Last Minute Sales Not Enough - Despite a healthy start, the Christmas shopping season took a nosedive that retail will not be able to recover from with the expectation that many companies will remain in the red after the season ends. I imagine that things are about to get much worse as more retail companies throw in the towel while others hold extreme sales in an effort to simply keep their doors open. The mismanagement of the bailout isn't helping but at this point I am wondering if a depression can be avoided as sadly we have the wrong leaders at the wrong time with the wrong people making the wrong decisions on what is needed to save the economy. The voters wanted an idiot in office and this is the price we all are now paying.

Notebooks Surpass Desktops - For the first time ever, notebook sales have surpassed desktop sales. The cause is the surge of interest in netbooks combined with extreme drop in prices for notebooks where the prices between the two is nearly indistinguishable considering the computing power of a notebook is now (essentially for the first time), more then enough to meet the average user's computing needs. Unless you’re a hard core gamer, the average laptop will do you just fine.