Idiot Inc.

GM to begin dropping dealerships today?

Jacopo Kane — Fri, 15 May 2009 18:45:55 +0000

GM is fixing to drop the hammer on 1,200 dealerships according to a Reuters source. The company has been losing 60-65 dealers per month, and has announced plans to end relationships with 2,600 out of its 6,000 dealers. Looks like the first 1,200 might find out as early as today.

[Thanks to Stock Market News for the tip]

Millennium Transit’s logo is shit

Jacopo Kane — Fri, 15 May 2009 18:42:02 +0000

I know they’re bankrupt, but surely Millennium Transit could have made a logo with a program other than MS-Paint.

Seagate continues layoffs — 1,100 to go this round

Jacopo Kane — Fri, 15 May 2009 18:38:12 +0000

The serial layoffers at Seagate will be trimming 2.5% of their workforce by the end of July. The company has already laid off over 3,000 workers and cut 25% from its labor costs, but things apparently keep getting worse for the hard-drive maker. Seagate has lost money over the last two quarters — will this latest round help the company become profitable? Probably not in the short-term since the company will pay $72 million in severance and fees to fire the 1,100.

[MarketWatch] Seagate to fire another 1,100 workers in cost-cutting move

VeriFone’s logo is exciting

Jacopo Kane — Wed, 13 May 2009 05:07:52 +0000

Talk about motivation: “The way to pay!” Fuck yeah! I love that blue wad on the left-hand side.

Pacific Ethanol teeters on the brink

Jacopo Kane — Tue, 12 May 2009 23:52:19 +0000

Pacific Ethanol, a Sacramento-based ethanol producer, today reported a 50% drop in quarterly revenue. The company’s quarterly revenue has fallen to $86 million from over $160 million last year. PE has been struggling so badly for the past few years that even Bill Gates’ investment firm got sick of losing money.

The company has warned that it may have to file for bankruptcy, and it’s easy to see why:

[Sacramento Bee] Pacific Ethanol reports 50 percent drop in revenue

Nissan posts first annual loss this century

Jacopo Kane — Tue, 12 May 2009 22:09:20 +0000

Nissan has just posted its first annual loss in 10 years because of “volatile market conditions.” And boy, what a loss it was: $2.4 billion. The car company’s sales dropped 22%, but this number was better than analysts had expected. Oh joy.

[Baltimore Sun] Nissan reports first annual loss in a decade

Bruno’s stiffed charity before going rotten

Jacopo Kane — Tue, 12 May 2009 21:48:13 +0000

According to Al.com, bankrupt regional grocery chain Bruno’s owes $103,000 to an autism charity that sponsored a fundraising sale last year. The company filed for bankruptcy last February, and is currently selling its assets and liquidating its stores. According to the attorney representing the autism charity, it is unlikely that the charity will be treated any differently from other creditors. In other words, they’ll be lucky as hell to get any money whatsoever.

Bank of America strong-arms fired employees

Jacopo Kane — Tue, 12 May 2009 19:54:56 +0000

Bank of America is refusing to give laid off employees permission to accept other jobs in the financial field unless they give up their compensation agreements or their right to sue the bank. Apparently, the company is classifying fired employees as ‘resigning’ if they go to work for a competitor, and thereby relinquishing their right to sue the bank. According to a lawyer who is representing fired BofA employees: “What Bank of America is doing is warping the statute to their advantage.”

A company flack said that this characterization of the bank’s practices were “inaccurate” but wouldn’t comment further.

[Reuters] BofA presses fired staff to give up right to sue

Charter cries in court over DirecTV ads

Jacopo Kane — Tue, 12 May 2009 19:00:15 +0000

Charter Communications, bankrupt baby that they are, has filed a lawsuit against DirecTV because of an ad campaign that mocks Charter’s bankruptcy filing. The company is asking for unspecified damages, and to try to block DirecTV from running the ads. If they really wanted to avoid criticism, maybe they shouldn’t have filed for bankruptcy.

[LA Business Journal] Charter sues DirecTV over ads

Nortel Networks posts half a bil. in losses

Jacopo Kane — Tue, 12 May 2009 18:37:35 +0000

Nortel Networks has posted a whopping $507 million loss for the first quarter of 2009 — much larger than its loss of $138 million last year. Numbers like these lend some credibility to claims that bankruptcy may be on the way.

BlogHer’s logo makes me want to BeatHer

Jacopo Kane — Tue, 12 May 2009 03:23:33 +0000

The logo of the women-centric ad network that uses creative accounting is pretty awful. What the hell are those squiggly lines supposed to represent?

Pier 1 imports’ logo is absolute crap

Jacopo Kane — Tue, 12 May 2009 03:21:48 +0000

Between the terrible font and the lower-case imports I’ve got a headache:

Dell risks government cash by laying off North Carolina employees

Jacopo Kane — Tue, 12 May 2009 03:05:44 +0000

Dell has confessed to the Winston-Salem city council that it has laid off 260 employees, leaving the factory with 1,140 workers left. The company built its factory in Forsyth County, North Carolina when it was offered $280 million in incentives. However, according to the agreement, the company must employ 1,700 workers by September 2010 in order to keep receiving the money. Looks like they’re going the wrong way…

Pop quiz: will the company start hiring like mad or start outsourcing like gangbusters before the deadline? Considering the fact that this is the second round of layoffs in two months, I think it’s safe to say we have some clues…

[Yahoo Finance] Dell reports 260 job losses to NC city council

Playboy losses spread like a center-fold

Jacopo Kane — Mon, 11 May 2009 15:08:32 +0000

It was a bad quarter for Playboy — revenue fell an alarming 21%, and the company recorded a loss of $13.7 million. The red number is three times Playboy’s loss for the same quarter last year. For Q2, the company is predicting a 39% decline in magazine advertising.

The company’s solution to all this? Having employees laid… off.

[Yahoo Finance] Playboy Enterprises reports wider 1Q loss

Allied Capital is getting better and better at losing money

Jacopo Kane — Mon, 11 May 2009 14:53:22 +0000

Private equity firm Allied Capital has posted $377 million in losses for last quarter — triple the company’s losses in Q1 of 2008. Allied is negotiating with lenders to restructure its debt agreements, but that’s of little consolation to stockholders who have already lost their shirts.

Check out the bloodbath: