Tell It To Al

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said he was betting the company on Windows 8 when he launched the new operating system last October.

Last week, however, Microsoft tacitly admitted sales of Window 8 were weak and promised to fix flaws in the software with future updates.

Window’s 8 was supposed to put Microsoft back into the mobile device game it has been losing to Apple for years. It hasn’t yet. And after missing out on just about every consumer computing revolution in the past decade, some say it’s time for Mr. Ballmer to step down.

One of them is Joachim Kempin, who for 15 years ran the Microsoft division that sells operating software to PC manufacturers.

He released a book, expressing his frustration with Mr. Ballmer, last October, timed to the Windows 8 release, called “Resolve and Fortitude: Microsoft’s “Secret Power Broker” Breaks His Silence.^“

Mr. Kempin frequents a mall near Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Wash. “There is an Apple store, crowded,” he said in a telephone interview. “Go in the Microsoft store, and if you find five people, you’re lucky.”

Some are calling the Windows 8 flop the biggest consumer product launch failure since “New Coke” 30 years ago. But Microsoft is still growing on the strength of its other businesses – primarily business software and cloud computing. As for Mr. Kempin, Microsoft doesn’t pay him much heed and says he’s a guy who retired a long time ago.

Click here to read my column in The Sunday Wall Street. And click here to watch me talk about this and other stories with Will Ripley of Denver’s NBC affiliate, 9News.

It seems no amount of horrific news will stop the cruise industry from growing.

Not even mysterious diseases, fires, missing persons, shipwrecks or a stagnant economy.

The prime age for cruisers is 45 and older, and with aging populations in the world’s most affluent nations, there seems to be a new cruiser born every second.

 Click here to read my column on MarketWatch. And click here to read my column on the Titanic II. The original Titanic went down in 1912, James Cameron released a movie about it in 1997, and now some people are lining up to do it all over again.

You know that expression, “like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic”? Well, some people are ready to cough up big buck for the chance to do just that. Click here to read about the demand.

Is Hewlett Packard CEO Meg Whitman digging her own grave?

She’s written down the value of H-P’s $10.3 Autonomy acquisition by $8.8 billion. And now she’s accusing the company’s former managers of accounting fraud.

Even if the accusations she’s leveled at Autonomy prove true, the debacle only highlights a multibillion mistake made on Ms. Whitman’s watch.

H-P has a long history of dumping it’s CEOs for mistakes like this.

Click here to read my column on Marketwatch.

And click here to read the column I wrote last year telling Ms. Whitman to back out of Autonomy and warning her of the of the H-P Boot.

Also click here to read a column I wrote on Ms. Whitman before she became CEO of H-P.

Behind GlaxoSmithKline’s $3 billion settlement of criminal and civil charges, lies a horrifying story of quarterly profits at any price.

The international pharmaceutical giant took pschiatrists on fabulous vacations and convinced them to prescribe anti-depressant drug, Paxil, to children, even the drug had not been approved for use in anyone under 18.

Click here to read my column on Marketwatch.com.

Apologies to Walt Whitman for using his words in mock praise of  captains of sinking ships, from Capt. Francesco Schettino to Capt. Bernie Madoff.

Whitman wrote his poem to honor slain president Abraham Lincoln. I simply liked the rhythm of the words, and the economy of spelling the word O without the “h” made it much easier to fit in a headline.

For all the rage against the captain of Carnival’s submerged vessels, there are many captains of industry who’ve caused bigger accidents.

Click here to read my column in The Sunday Wall Street Journal.

Why isn’t anyone asking the most obvious question?

How is  it that regulators failed to spot the risky bets that MF Global was making? Didn’t they learn anything after 2008?

Where was the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, MF Global’s primary regulator? asks Steve  Blitz,  senior economist at ITG Investment Research.

“How is it that the Fed (FRBNY) allowed a primary dealer to operate with 40 to 1 leverage in this day and age?,” he writes.

“The FRBNY has, and always has had, minimum capital requirements for primary dealers in order to effectively eliminate counterparty risk on settlement.

“In the past several years the Fed, Bernanke in particular, has made the point that the Fed is the regulator of choice to oversee macroprudential risk as far as the financial system is concerned. Yet here we are in 2011 and the Fed (FRBNY) and the SEC for that matter have failed yet again, it is as if we are back in 2007.

“Running the ship aground but taking credit for the rescue operation worked to enhance Bernanke’s reputation in 2009/2010, but it shouldn’t any longer.”

“This really is the story of MF Global’s demise – once again the Fed and the SEC were absent and failed in their self-appointed role as guardians shielding the economy from macroprudential risk created by the financial system. The markets and the economy are lucky MF Global was too small to matter, they could have been bigger. What other dealer desks are leveraged to this extent? Does the Fed or SEC know?”

Well, Mr. Blitz, if they don’t know, it’s probably because they don’t want to know. At least they’re good at asking one question, though:  Where did all the money go?

Hewlett-Packard wants out of the personal computer business?

It wants out of the smart phone and tablet business, too?

Any wonder it’s stock is down more than40% over the past year?

Since losing CEO Mark Hurd in a dispute over expense reports and a sexual harassment allegation, H-P has made one corporate blunder after the next.

Click here to read my column in the Sunday Wall Street Journal .

BP has finally got a cap on its well. Toyota’s putting a cap on its runaway car saga. And Apple is shoving its iPhone 4 in a case.

Unlike BP and Toyota, Apple Inc. denies it has a problem. But just in case the antenna in the iPhone 4 really is as buggy as some users claim, Apple is giving a free case to purchasers. This reportedly eliminates the issue with the so-called “death-grip” hand position that can weaken a wireless signal. Click here to read more from the Associated Press.

Jaming the iPhone 4 in a case is cheaper than taking it back. But Apple’s Steve Jobs said the company will give full refunds to those who are still unhappy with the solutions provided, as he should.

Jobs also used the latest announcement as an opportunity to show how competing products can lose signal strength. (Note to all crisis PR strategists: There’s nothing like denigrating the competition while correcting your own defective product. Don’t bite the Apple, bite the Blackberry.)

“We’re not feeling right now that we have a giant problem we need to fix,” Jobs said. “This has been blown so out of proportion that it’s incredible. I know it’s fun to have a story, but it’s less fun when you’re on the other end of it.”

Jobs, of course, has no trouble with the media when it blows his product lauches out of proportion. I haven’t heard him whine about that once.

Almost everything that is wrong with the airline industry seems to have started with Spirit Airlines.

It was the first airline to charge customers for their bags. It was the first airline to charge for carry-on bags. It has taken the low-fare battle for market share – which always seems to bankrupt airlines in the end – to $9 one-way fares. But those $9 fares come with fees that can jack the price of a trip to even more than a flight on a real airline.

Spirit has also long resorted to advertising over the Internet with cheap, sexually explicit ads to attract attention. Some of the ads are so filthy, my editors won’t allow me to describe them.

Click here to read my column on Spirit stranding thousands of customers amid a pilot strike.

Got a complaint about Spirit? Spirit doesn’t care. Click here to read this piece the New York Times did last year, called “Don’t Come Crying To This Airline.”

Some of our TV talking heads have been calling President Obama’s remark about “whose ass to kick” undignified and vulgar.

Imagine such language from a president. Why, you’d never hear Richard Nixon talking like that.

The fact is, NBC’s Matt Lauer coaxed the remark out of Obama with a question suggesting he wasn’t doing enough about BP’s oil spill. The fact is, the devastation of this oil spill is growing day by day, and will continue to do so. The fact is, someone mess up. The fact is, someone’s ass needs to be kicked.

Personally, I’m inclined to trust people a little bit more if they use colloquialisms like “kick ass.” It shows they are human. It shows they are willing to take off the masks and costumes of their office. But I also know there are two kinds of leaders in the world. Those kick ass. And those who just talk about it.