Caught an economy that doesn't want to totally slow down and inflation that doesn't want to jump up. Not a bad place to be, if you think about it. But for Fed watchers it is kind of, well, boring. It means the Fed just stays at 5.25 percent. Of course, you carefully have to watch both sides of the equation. If the latest GDP number comes in this week a little light, the Fed may have to think about cutting down the road. But if oil prices go back up or the job market tightens more, then the Fed may have to stay away from cut-land. Sure, a good spot, but a nervous one.
Fed pause

Prepare for some Vista hoopla. The new Microsoft operating system comes to the consumer world tomorrow. Huzzah. Of course, the experts say this system is much better than XP ..., which was much better than its predecessors. I haven't had a "Blue Screen of Death" in a while. But is it perfect? Of course not. And Apple users will no doubt continue to turn up their noses. I'll probably wait until I get a new computer until getting Vista ... hopefully with whatever security holes are found plugged up. In the meantime, look for some good times in the tech sector. A new Microsoft operating system generally means a bounce as applications are relaunched and new widgets made. (I still think they should have stayed with the name "Longhorn," but I'm a Wild West fan.) Vista ... A review

We've been having fun all week with our "101 Dumbest Moments in Business" feature from our partners at Business 2.0. There are some real bonehead moves in there ... like the company that gave out morale-boosting iPods to employees in June, only to ask for them back from employees when it laid them off in July. There are other things that seem not so much like bad judgment as bad execution: Sony's exploding batteries or McDonald's virus filled promotional MP3 players. But they all point up something a lot of people don't appreciate. Managing a big company with many moving parts and many different minds is very hard. A stupid decision down low can reverberate all the way up to the top. Of course, it usually happens the other way around ... but that's not news or remarkable.

Dumb moments

Talk about an 'ouchie.' People were expecting bad news from Ford, but the car maker managed to make it worse. It missed estimates and posted its biggest yearly loss ever. Now there is a positive way of looking at this. Ford took a lot of restructuring hits last year and this could just be the pain that goes along with setting things right ... like resetting a broken bone or running off 50 pounds. "We fully recognize our business reality and are dealing with it," said Ford CEO Alan Mulally. Hey, no pain, no gain. Right? Of course, sometimes pain is just pain.
Ford's loss

Ethanol stocks got a nice pop early this week. So did oil. The moves were plays on the President's speech. Reducing gasoline consumption by 20 percent in 10 years is bound to do something for ethanol companies. And doubling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve means the US will be in the market buying, adding to overall demand and driving up prices. The news on those initiatives came out in dribs and drabs while the market was still working yesterday ... hence the run up. Of course, if the government was a private company, the SEC would be sniffing about wondering who leaked info to certain investors before the world at large. Wonder if any senators, who typically get a heads up on White House initiatives, bought up any PEIX, VSE, or XTHN in the last couple of days? Interesting note ... Bill Gates bought into ethanol about a year ago.

Three big industry conferences this week ...the Consumer Electronics Show, the Detroit Auto Show, and MacWorld. These are all venues where companies show off various new products. It's a buzz fest. But I have a rule about conferences. When they get to the point where more people talk about the event in and of itself rather than what goes on at the event, it's jumped the shark. That seems to be the case with CES. Most of the news coming out of there was telegraphed well ahead of time. Still, there's a lot of "gee whiz" gadgets being unveiled.
Gates speaks

I guess Dad was right about getting that college degree. These days it's the educated and skilled that are in demand. If you look at that particular job market, it is very, very tight ... just a 1.8 percent unemployment rate. When I first entering the job market and seeing longshoremen and garbage men pulling down big union bucks compared to my meager entry level salary, I wondered about whether the education was worth it. But now it seems so. So when you see things like today's job number, 167,000 jobs added ... good but not jaw dropping, remember that is just the first layer of the employment onion.
The skilled labor shortage

It sucks to work at Wal-Mart. It probably sucks to manage Wal-Mart too. The store is caught between two desires. One is economic ... to have the lowest possible labor costs while meeting customer demands. So you want to schedule workers to be there when you need them, but not have them around when you don't. So you do a lot of part time fiddling and split-shift moves. (That used to be done by a human, but today's news is that Wal-Mart has found a software program to do it). But then you run up against another desire ... to treat workers decently (which I'm assuming Wal-Mart wants to ultimately do). That's hard with this type of scheduling. People have lives and lives need some predictably ... like having Tuesdays off, regular hours, etc. Where to come down? One thing to make the equation a little more equitable might be to have an economic cost for keeping employees "on call," which is a central part of a flexible scheduling system.
Wal-Mart computerizes shifts