Tell It To Al

Where did I plan to ride out Hurricane Sandy?

In a 40th floor hotel room that just happened to be below this collapsed crane.

My wife and I were evacuated from Le Parker Meridien hotel just as the storm hit.

Were it not for the kindness of a good friend, we’d have been left homeless, or at least temporarily out of the running in the mad scramble for another hotel room.

Click here to read my column on Marketwatch.com

This is the most ridiculous emergency situation I’ve ever seen.

Seven blocks remain cordoned off. The businesses on these blocks are closed. Hundreds of police and emergency workers, who could be, say, fishing bodies out of houses, are maintaining barricades instead.

All because of a crane that was building new homes for billionaires.

Celebrity chef Mario Batali has apologized for comparing bankers to Stalin and Hitler.

It’s never a good idea to compare anyone to Stalin or Hitler, who occupy a class of evil unto themselves. If you’re doing it at an Occupy rally, you’ll lose credibility. And if you’re doing it while you’re running places where the well-healed eat their power lunches, you’ll lose customers.

Calls for boycotts reverberated over Bloomberg news terminals, the news service reports. Click here to read the details from Bloomberg.

“It was never my intention to equate our banking industry with Hitler and Stalin, two of the most evil, brutal dictators in modern history,” Batali said in an apology released through a spokeswoman.

Perhaps potential boycotters will now reconsider. At least this chef  is willing to eat his own cooking.

Too many parents are an embarrassment while their children are on the game field.

Image you are the starting catcher in a high school baseball team in Bergen County, N.J. and your game is interrupted because your mom and dad have to leave early … in their helicopter.

Well, it’s not their helicopter, actually. It belongs to the state police and is paid for by state taxpayers. Oh, and your dad is a tough-talking Republican governor who is always taking the hatchet to wasteful state spending.

I sure feel sorry for Andrew Christie, oldest son of Gov. Chris Christie. His parents sure dropped the ball on this one.  Click here to read about the game.  Reminds me of the time auto executives flew their private jets to Washington to discuss their bailouts.

Back from Montana, I just had to write something on the Berkeley Pit, a giant pool of toxic waste that the Butte chamber of commerce has remarkably turned into a tourism attraction.

Click here to read my column on The Berkeley Pit, an open-pit copper mine, 1,700 feet deep, a mile wide, and flooded with more than 40 billion gallons of contaminated water. It helped make America the electronic nation it is today. And, somehow, I can’t think of anything that serves as a better metaphor for where we are today.

Some say BP stands for “British Polluters.” Other’s say “Being Pummelled.” After watching BP CEO Tony Hayward’s videos, I think it stands for “Bumbling Professor.”

Hayward, who has a doctorate degree in geology, makes one empty promise after the next about plugging the well that is spewing unknown amounts of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Click here to see what he said on May 13 – and BP is still trying to plug the hole.

Scarier than the leak itself is BP’s ad hoc approach to the disaster.

Click here to read my column on Hayward.

Louisianna fisherman George Barisich called it early on: The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico will keep growing and growing like that thing in the 1958 sci-fi flick The Blob.

Click here to read my column on Barisich.

Whenever a company blows like a head gasket on a Chyrsler Sebring, I enjoy going back in the archives and seeing what the CEO said in conference calls, press releases and television interviews.

There is no better way to highlight the arrogance, stupidity or perhaps dishonesty of the used car salesmen we often hire to run our companies.

Case in point, my latest column on the CEO who ran BankUnited, the bank regulators recently seized in Florida. As he flooded the Sunshine State with mortgages, he opined Florida was virtually recession-proof. Click here to read column.

Continue reading…

Smith & Wesson is recalling handguns that may just go off by themselves.

“Smith & Wesson has identified a condition … which may permit a round to be discharged without the trigger being pulled,” the Springfield, Mass. gun maker said on its website.

The recall applies to Walther PPK and PPK/S pistols.

And just in case gun owners didn’t know, the company says: “Any unintended discharge of a firearm has the potential for causing injury, and we ask that you stop using your pistol immediately.”

Otherwise, you can tell it to the judge: “Your honor, really, the gun just went of by itself.”

(PHOTO: Smith & Wesson)