Comments on: I Wondered About This: China as Scapegoat

By: M. Hodak

M. Hodak — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 13:02:59 +0000

By the way, the religious services this weekend reminded me of where our phrase “scapegoat” came from. It’s from the story of Yom Kippur where Aaron was to make up to God for the sins of his (already smote) adult children. He was to prepare two goats. The goat for God would be sacrificed on the altar. The goat for Azalel would have the community’s sins placed on its head and sent into the desert (the scape-goat). Not being that religious, I had a hard time deriving the moral, except perhaps that there are worse things to be in this world than a scapegoat.

By: M. Hodak

M. Hodak — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 12:57:12 +0000

I don’t think this mea culpa can be called “under the radar.” It was very public. I offer kudos to Debrowski for figuring out what the right thing to do was, then doing it. Dealing with your problems honestly is the only way to move forward, especially with a large, complex, supply chain that depends on good information to function.

By: Ames Tiedeman

Ames Tiedeman — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 18:21:28 +0000

In the U.S. interest rate are going lower, Gold is going higher, Oil is going higher, inflation is going higher, the dollar is going lower. What is wrong with this? Everything! At some point the FED is going to have to raise rates bigtime. We are in a very, very, precarious situation at the moment. I think Gold will tripple to over $2,000 an ounce when the market finally wakes up and sees the real inflation. Last I checked a lower dollar = higher import prices. There is no inflation deflator here. With commodities on fire you can forget about that. Bernanke should have never lowered rates last week. However, the Fed might be doing something that few have talked about. Maybe the Fed has abandoned the dollar to crush the trade deficit. Good luck, it will take 20 years to correct our 6% of GDP trade deficit and move it back to under 1% of GDP, unless you want to seriously disrupt the global economy. We are in for tough times people. Very tough! The FED will not be able to save housing with lower rates. We are in for a 10 year decline in home prices. It is called a cycle!

By: Eric H

Eric H — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 03:13:28 +0000

Well, since the Chinese are famously bad at developing brands, this is a win-win strategy: it preserves Mattel's brand by blaming the Chinese, and then preserves Mattel's relationship with an under-the-radar mea culpa. In the end, the perception is that mistakes were made, but not by anyone important.

Brilliant. Cynical, but brilliant.

By: Xmas

Xmas — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 16:41:01 +0000

Mattel must have realized that their strategy was successful on the short term, but horrible on the long.

The successfully diverted the blame away from their design and product quality inspection processes onto "Chinese Manufacturers", saving them some face.

But now everyone is questioning the safety of all toys made by "Chinese Manufacturers". This is bad, because we in the US don't differentiate between Chinese manufacturers. They're all the same in our eyes, there is no brand differentiation between plants or even regions. Just this amalgam idea in our heads of millions of smoke-belching factories full of teenage girls working 100 hours a week for a nickle a day