Psst. Here’s some buzz that I just picked up. The economy isn’t doing so well right now. And the outrage and anger toward Wall Street and business leaders is at levels I’ve never seen in my lifetime. Each year, Fortune magazine runs a list of the dumbest things businesses did in the previous 12 months. Here are the Top 10 dumbest business moments of the previous year.

1. China Recalls

In 2007, more than 20 million items made in China had to be recalled. Lead paint in Cookie Monsters, tiny magnets in Barbie dolls, football helmets with defective chin straps, tainted pet food—no segment of society is safe from dangerously defective Chinese products.

2. Doggie Anti-Depressants

Speaking of pets, in 2007, the drug maker Eli Lily gained FDA approval to put the anti-depressant drug Prozac into chewable, beef-flavored pills to treat separation anxiety in dogs.

3. Doggie Fortune

Continuing the theme, in her will, hotel baroness Leona Helmsley leaves $12 million to her white Maltese, Trouble.

4. Merrill Lynch

Thanks to its $1.3 billion purchase of First Franklin Financial in 2007, Merrill Lynch becomes the world’s leading underwriter of sub-prime mortgage backed securities. I guess that strategy hasn’t worked out so well.

5. Merrill Lynch CEO Retires

In September 2007, as his company piles up the biggest quarterly loss in its 93 year history, Merrill Lynch CEO squeezes in three rounds of golf on three different courses on a single day. A month later, he retires and walks away with a $165 million compensation package.

6. Citigroup CEO Retires

Equally touching is the story of Citigroup CEO Chuck Prince who resigned after the company took an $11 billion write-down.

7. Toilet Tech Fiasco

The Japanese company Toto apologizes to customers after at least three of its high-tech toilet seats, featuring air purifiers, blow dryers and water sprayers, catch fire. According to a company spokesman, “fortunately, nobody was using the toilets when the fire broke out because the fire would have been just under their buttocks.”

8. Kentucky Fried Rats

A video clip showing hordes of rats in a New York City KFC/Taco Bell outlet after closing gets almost a million hits on YouTube.

9. Le Monde Praises Ratatouille

I don’t know why this item made the list, but number nine is the French newspaper Le Monde’s praising the pixar movie Ratatouille about a rat in restaurant kitchen as “one of the greatest gastronomic films in the history of cinema.”

10. Hacking of Diebold’s Electronic Voting Machines

Hackers use a picture of a key posted on the company’s website to form a real key that they use to open Diebold’s electronic voting machines.

*******

If you want to see the entire list of 101 dumbest business moments, check out the Fortune magazine website. And if you think businesses did dumb things in 2007, the 2008 list should be a real beauty. It’s due out in December.

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