CNBC reports that Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has spoken with over half of the members of the 30 companies used to calculate the Dow Jones Industrial average, and they are all “disgusted” with the government shutdown situation.
By mid-morning today, over 200,000 Starbucks customers had signed a petition saying its time for the U.S. government to come together and pay its debts on time to avoid another financial crisis.
3 Questions That Arise From This Story
1. Isn’t it ironic that a company that sells mainly coffee is taking the tea party to task? Ladies and gentlemen, to continue our hot beverage related analogy, this is the exact opposite of the pot calling the kettle “black.” Rather this is the beverage brewed in the pot fairly calling the beverage made with a kettle “stupid.”
2. How badly are you getting schooled in finance when the people who buy $5 coffees all morning are telling you to get your financial act together? If aspiring folk singers can afford $25 a day on coffee, or $9,125 per year, then certainly many Americans with no folk-singing skills can afford to pay far less than that to buy health insurance on an exchange, without destroying the entire country, right?
3. More than half of the Dow Jones component companies’ CEOs are disgusted? Forgetting for a moment that more than half of these successful business leaders don’t appear to share Congress’ views about how to do business, we can’t help but wonder which companies said this. Let’s take a look at some of them to put this in perspective and imagine how they might react if they were also in the business of writing parody and satirical blogs, like this web site!
- 3M – They aren’t even disgusted when you try badly to flirt with your office receptionist on Post-it notes.
- American Express, Visa, and JP Morgan Chase – “Hey, what you order on the internet is your business, if you pay your bills on time. Speaking about paying your bills on time, you are totally not getting your next flight out of D.C. for free, Congress, if you don’t pay yours on time.”
- AT&T & Verizon – “At least when Congresspeople were texting photos of their genitals, they were adding to the economy by data usage, but these day long filibusters would be better if they dialled them in on one of their phones instead of metaphorically dialling in their jobs.”
- Caterpillar – “We make machines that dig up dirt. By the way, was digging up dirt on experienced politicians in commercials how these inexperienced tea party members got elected?”
- Chevron, Exxon Mobil, & Dupont – Hey, if the CEOs of companies that have had oil or chemical spills call you disgusting, you might want to consider whether it’s because you’re doing something disgusting.
- Boeing, General Electric & United Technologies – These companies make airplanes or their engines, so perhaps they’ve been on some airplanes and seen passengers wearing low-hanging track pants, which would make them potential authorities of “disgusting.”
- Wal-mart – “Sale on track pants and other George fashions! P.S. PeopleOfWalmart.com, please stop posting photos of our overweight customers wearing thongs.”
- Goldman Sachs – “At least nobody is calling us a ‘vampire squid’ today! Although vampire squids would be a good idea for a movie, maybe we should get someone to pitch that to Disney if they happen to be calling the majority of Dow Components.”
- The Walt Disney Company – “While we might have sarcastically passed on a vampire squid movie in the past, it’s kinda hard to mock bad ideas after the box office numbers for the Lone Ranger.”
- The Home Depot – Their slogan is “More Saving, More Doing.” So Home Depot is kinda the opposite of Congress.
- Coca-Cola. All we know is that the Coca-Cola Freestyle machines that allow you to mix 125 flavors at once are a greater accomplishment than any government could possibly achieve! Diet-cherry-vanilla-Fanta-Zero-flavored Dasani water? Yes, please!
- IBM, Cisco, Intel, and Microsoft – Hey, wasn’t the last time these companies were super-popular around the 1990s, also the last time when there was a government shut-down? “Hey, that’s not fair,” we might expect these companies to say, “we’re far more popular than the Blackberries used by some members of Congress!” Touche!
- McDonald’s – We wonder if McRib sitings are more common than Congress passing bills with bi-partisan support.
- Travelers Insurance - “What you expect a joke from us? I knew we should have bought comprehensive joke re-insurance policies last year for this exact situation!”
- Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Pfizer & United Health Group – While there has been talks about the importance of lowering a medical device tax by Congress, we’d wager healthcare companies like the idea of more people having health insurance. But we’d also wager insurance companies could come up with awesome jokes, so who knows how good we are at wagering?
- Nike – “Just Do It, Congress. And we’re using ‘it’ very lightly to mean anything.”
- Procter & Gamble – “Just say the word and Mr. Clean will come by the Capitol Building with a Swiffer and clean up whatever mess you just said was disgusting.”
