Save My Sonics!

Ok, that's a bit melodramatic. The Sonics will probably do just fine in Oklahoma. But they need to be saved for Seattle.

The Sonics are being threatened because the owner wants a new arena. And the voters & government don't want to build a new arena. Well, with the economy now going in the tank, governments are looking for ways to stimulate the economy.

See where I'm going here? A new basketball arena would be a big stimulus. If the state needs to dump a bunch of money into the economy anyway, why not dump it into an arena? It'd be better than spending it on more highways, although probably not as good as spending it on more new trains.

Executive Glory Hypothesis

After reading about so many absurdly rich executives, I've developed a hypothesis about them. Maybe someone has already come up with it, but it is that at some point, executives get paid so much and are so confident in a gigantic golden parachute that they stop being motivated by money. Once this happens, the only motivation left to them is executive glory, getting to be seen as the great leader.

This provides incentive to be excessively risky without having to balance the consequences of failure. If the risky strategy fails horribly, executives will be let go with a giant golden parachute guaranteeing them & their children incredible wealth for the rest of their lives. If the risky strategy succeeds however, the executive will be seen as a great hero of business, like Jack Welch, and will be idolized by CEOs around the world. Great success rarely happens, but because executives have no penalty for failure, spectacular crashes are way too common.