Quote of the day

"Congress is their last chance to find a sucker who will give them more money."

Rain Tomorrow

A quick read on the decline in clarity of business writing.

I work for a big corporation, and I see evidence of this every day. Not only are kids rewarded for using lots of words, we are rewarded in the workplace for using more words (and bigger words) than required, and certainly for using buzzwords.

"Speak to" drives me nuts.

Oh, I'd put a bet on success

If I were able, I think I'd put a bet on Under Armour shoes being a success.

"Success or failure is not going to be determined by a day or a weekend," Kevin A. Plank, Under Armour chairman and chief executive officer, said in an interview early Saturday minutes before the launch.

"Today is just the beginning," Plank later told employees at the company's flagship store at Westfield Annapolis Mall. "It's just the starting line."

SportsOneSource, a company that tracks shoe sales, said it would have a better indication about the launch results in two weeks.

When Under Armour launched its football cleats two years ago, it didn't see results until six weeks later. It now holds 22 percent of that market.

"It really is difficult to judge the first weekend," said Matt Powell, an analyst with SportsOneSource. "Sometimes the numbers look big and don't materialize or stay that way. Sometimes it's vice versa. I think we're better off to wait a couple of weeks to get a good read."

Everything I've seen them do has worked. Given the success of the cleats, I'll bet they do ok with the general public. I sure do see a lot of UA wear at the gym.

I saw this coming

It was just a matter of time before insurance companies started getting out of states where the companies were forced to cover losses for which they did not collect premiums.

State Farm announced today that they are done in Mississippi.

"It is no longer prudent for us to take on additional risk in a legal and business environment that is becoming more unpredictable," Bob Trippel, senior vice president of the largest home insurer in the United States, said in a statement.

...

"Current legal and business environments ... are becoming untenable," said Trippel in a letter to Mississippi Insurance Commissioner George Dale

Insurance companies said the same things as they were getting out of California after the state decided that all homes were to be insured at replacement cost, even though they were not paying for it (and were grossly underinsured).