Dubious ‘90s Trump Greedy ‘80s
If the 1980s was the “decade of greed” in business, what should we call the 1990s?
Bill Gates’ net worth touched $100 billion. Walt Disney Chairman Michael Eisner made $569.8 million in one day. About the only saving grace was that Planet Hollywood filed for protection from creditors in U.S. Bankruptcy Court.
The decade was a hodgepodge of less-than-worthy events in business, the one constant being that it both started and ended with Donald Trump getting a lot of unwarranted publicity.
Here are a few of the decade’s dubious events to jog the memory:
1990:
And the Los Angeles Rams will win the Super Bowl in the year 2000 . . .
In the 1987 bestseller “The Great Depression of 1990,” economist Ravi Batra predicted that 1990 would bring a stock market crash and the worst depression the world has seen. (Since Dec. 31, 1989, the Dow Jones industrial average is up more than 300%.)
The name of the game also aptly describes his presidential bid . . .
In the wake of financial problems developer Donald Trump was experiencing then, Bloomingdale’s marked down the price of “Trump: The Game” from $35 to $17.50.
Let’s hear it for due diligence . . .
Italian financier Giancarlo Parretti bought Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for $1.3 billion with loans from a French bank even though, it would later be revealed, he had a lengthy criminal rap sheet that included passing bad checks, embezzlement and conspiracy to commit bodily harm.
1991:
Prime Minister of Southfork . . .
Larry Hagman, who played corrupt oilman J.R. Ewing on the long-running show “Dallas,” met with officials of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
A merger that produced both synergy and lots of Scrabble points . . .
Austrian bank Oesterreichische Laenderbank merged with Zentralsparkasse und Kommerzialbank.
If they’d known it would be this much trouble, they’d have shipped a bunch of calendars instead . . .
Century 21 tried to send the discontinued gold blazers its real estate agents wore to Armenia, but ran into problems when Soviet bureaucrats insisted they be dry-cleaned first.
The good news is he stays awake when his cable stations show wrestling . . .
Ted Turner fell asleep watching his Atlanta Braves play the Minnesota Twins in one of the most dramatic World Series in baseball history.
1992:
As that Chihuahua would say: “Yo quiero location, location, location” . . .
UC Irvine announced the “Taco Bell Chair in Real Estate Management.”
Will work for goat-cheese-and-prosciutto pizza . . .
A Los Angeles law firm received a food credit at restaurants owned by celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck in lieu of its $25,000 retainer for handling the bankruptcy of a restaurant Puck invested in.
The explanation: Investors were cheered by the cancellation of Chevy Chase’s show . . .
Doomsday investment guru Robert Prechter predicted a stock market peak because of Johnny Carson’s retirement as host of “The Tonight Show.”
1993:
For $150, you can get one that looks like the Watergate Hotel . . .
The gift catalog from the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Birthplace included a $45 birdhouse made to look like his boyhood home.
These days, they’ll take either description over “the network that aired ‘The Magical Legend of the Leprechauns’ ” . . .
General Electric Co. asked reporters to quit referring to its then-ailing NBC network as “beleaguered” or “embattled.”
1994:
Rebel without a contract clause . . .
A South Korean businessman selling unauthorized James Dean brand underwear was sued by the family of the late actor.
Enough to keep 25,000 old men in pajamas for an entire year . . .
Playboy Enterprises took a $1.2-million write-down on “Hugh Hefner: Once Upon a Time,” a vanity documentary about the company founder.
Violate it, and you’ll be forced to watch every acceptance speech from start to finish . . .
A candy maker sued by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for making unauthorized chocolate Oscars agreed to a legal settlement that said it won’t “advertise, manufacture, sell or offer to any entity any naked male victory figurine holding its hands or any object in front of its chest or abdomen.”
That Mickey Mantle jersey sure smells like Tide . . .
Federal prosecutors alleged former sports memorabilia businessman and Los Angeles Kings owner Bruce McNall bought replicas of famous sports jerseys and washed them over and over to make them look old and fool banks into believing they were authentic so they would accept them as collateral.
1995:
Ford Bronco sales were especially hurt . . .
An economic report by a Minneapolis bank concluded that retail sales were being hurt because “too many people were watching the O.J. Simpson trial and not shopping.”
The bad news: His neighbor has his own multiplex . . .
Universal Studios parent Seagram Co. revealed it built a $2.3-million screening room at the home of since-departed Chief Executive Frank Biondi Jr.
Only catch: Taxpayers won’t bail you out . . .
A law firm’s ad theme was “If Orange County can file for bankruptcy, so can you.”
1996:
But serving overpriced food and running the stock price into the ground is OK . . .
Documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission about a stock offering by Planet Hollywood included a clause saying that celebrity investors such as Bruce Willis, Whoopi Goldberg and Arnold Schwarzenegger had the right to force the company to buy back their shares at a fair market price when any “high-profile senior executive officer of the company is convicted of a felony, or for use of illegal drugs, or of a crime of moral turpitude.”
1997:
And he still gets into Disneyland for free . . .
Disney Chairman Michael Eisner exercised stock options worth $569.8 million in a single day.
1998:
The real reason Trump is single . . .
Ted Turner said he might be interested in running for president, but wife Jane Fonda opposes it.
Stop this guy if he ever puts on a purple dinosaur costume . . .
To soften his image in the wake of a federal antitrust action, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates demonstrated for interviewer Barbara Walters how he sings “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” to his daughter.
After that, the Skunk Product Safety Commission issued strict new guidelines . . . Yoplait yogurt containers were modified after as many as 14 skunks died when their heads became stuck in discarded containers. Commenting on the move, a spokesman for Yoplait parent General Mills said: “A dozen dead skunks is a dozen dead skunks too many.”
1999:
Maybe the KGB forgot to send him his W-2 . . .
Convicted spy Aldrich Ames filed an appeal with the U.S. Tax Court appealing an IRS ruling that he owed back taxes and penalties on money paid to him for spying for the Soviet Union.
On top of that, Disney let Randy Newman, the guy who wrote “Short People,” do the “Toy Story” soundtracks . . .
Testifying in the breach-of-contract trial brought by former Disney studio chief Jeffrey Katzenberg, Eisner admitted he may have said of Katzenberg: “I hate the little midget.”
He also boasts a surplus balance of trade . . .
The net worth of Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates climbed past the gross domestic product of the Philippines.
Where have I heard that name before?
Ravi Batra published a new book this year titled “The Crash of the Millennium.”
Most annoying trends of the ‘90s . . .
* Focus groups to validate executive decisions.
* Hiring consultants to validate executive decisions.
* Hiring as full-time employees the consultants hired to validate executive decisions because it’s cheaper in the long run.
* Themed restaurants.
* Seat licenses giving you the right to buy a ticket for a football game.
* “Push” technology for personal computers.
* Executive firings explained as one of the following: “resigning to pursue other interests,” “resigning to pursue other opportunities” and “resigning to spend more time with his family.”
* Computer geeks who become worth hundreds of millions of dollars when their money-losing companies go public in an IPO.
Worst buzzwords and catch phrases of the ‘90s . . .
* Branding
* Downsizing
* Rightsizing
* Information superhighway
* “Reinventing” anything
* Synergy
* Convergence
* E-anything
* Marketing with “attitude” or being “edgy”
* A level playing field
* At the end of the day . . .
