Fed-induced booms tend to bring out some off-the-wall behaviors. Here's the stock chart for Starbucks.
The Fed's printing press has been very good to them.
When such extremes occur, the tendency to make odd-ball decisions becomes very tempting. Satisfying the most urgent desires of your customers, and constantly improving your core strengths, becomes almost boring. The desire to do SOMETHING BIG creeps in.
Who remembers when AOL bought TimeWarner during The Fed's Nasdaq bubble? Or when Yahoo bought Broadcast.com? Mark Cuban surely remembers that one! Those were Fed-induced, boom-time decisions. Those companies couldn't think straight.
In this boom, Starbucks wants its baristas to talk to customers about race relations (!!!) If I were the CEO of Dunkin' Donuts, I'd have a big smile on my face right now. Such an idea can only percolate inside of a Federal Reserve mirage.
This idea had to have been hatched from the brain of a progressive. Corporations must be about "people instead of profits," or they must be "socially responsible," or whatever other lingo they're using these days.
Basically, progressives want corporations to be like government schools and government's mainstream media -- hubs of indoctrination. Progressives don't want you to have any escape from their 'thought training'.
Well good luck with this one Starbucks. Besides putting your baristas in a terribly awkward position, I'm sure this will go very smoothly with your customers as well. Perhaps you can supply some boxing gloves, just in case the "race relations" talk gets heated. Maybe get ThinkProgress to sponsor them. Promise to put their logo right across the knuckles.
I'm just one occasional customer, but when I go to Starbucks I want a coffee for a price that I'm willing to pay, and I want it quick. You can keep the political chit-chat.
As always, when this Fed-boom inevitably collapses, the beer goggles will come off as well. Starbucks will most likely have to close a bunch of its stores, and layoff many of its "race-relations" baristas. It'll be forced to concentrate on its customers and satisfying their needs, profitably, once again.
Chris Rossini is author of Set Money Free: What Every American Needs To Know About The Federal Reserve. Follow @chrisrossini on Twitter.
Wow! great post Mr. Rossini. Your suggestion that this weird policy is due to federal reserve counterfeiting is intriguing. Whether this is the cause or just some brain aneurism in management it is strange. Lumb, (the author of an article you referenced) concludes with the observation that the policy is working because it has resulted in "...a frothy mix of snark and indignant anger at Starbucks..." How can this be viewed as "working" unless the objective is to destroy the business? Very strange.
ReplyDeleteI suppose that the race relations talk is supposed to be one way. They don't want to open this can of worms.
ReplyDeleteGuess i'll be ordering a triple shot in my White Guilt Peppermint Mocha from now on.
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