Thoughts of a Kiwi in Minneapolis - on Hell

If I was suddenly brought before my maker and challenged to describe our last 36 months in a single word, it would most likely be 'purgatory'. It's the experience you have when trapped for an undefined period of time, in an indefinable place, contemplating your sins, going neither forward or back whilst your fate is decided - "you were good in your life Mr Dalton, but not THAT good ... ".

We are the Minneapolis undead.

Speaking of fire and brimstone, a Gallup poll in May 2002 reported that 71 % of Americans actually still believe in Hell (they'd no doubt account for a big fraction of the 100 million or so who also believe that the earth was formed less than 5,000 years ago). Yet, discussion of the concept in sermons has reached an all time low. According to religious authorities, Hell is just "too negative".

Right now I'm sitting in LAX waiting for a plane delayed 3 hours by the seasonal mid-west thunderstorms. We've been here on a sales trip and had a fair insight into what Hell looks like. Not red-hot pokers, bamboo shoots, and Val Doonigan on high rotation - just West Coast commuting. Two hours to travel 40km on the freeway last evening, most of it at near standstill speeds.

Thinking we would be home free this afternoon after the client meeting, we set off at 1 pm to find the return conditions almost identical but joyfully the journey only took 1 :45 instead. How do people maintain their sanity amidst such conditions? Oh that's right, they don't. They get their guns out and kill each other.

Midwest storms are something to be seen (and heard!).

The lightening is bright enough to read by, and the accompanying thunder can sound like it's in the room next door. Minnesota also gets its share of twisters, although nothing like the South. When a bad storm is progressing across the state, every tv channel overlays a storm warning and map of Minnesota over the program you are watching.

It's an attempt to emulate the multi-message format of many of the CNN-type news channels today. The record so far is 7 pieces of separate data on the one screen, with the talking head reduced to about 20% of the right hand side. You get stock quotes and headlines in 2 tickers across the bottom, the weather forecast, two other headlines for stories the head will talk about soon, and the main story from the talking head.

I guarantee that this will come to a tv screen near you. Soon.

Travel is a bit of an all round bastard in the US for a foreign passport holding person. Every checkpoint is a full search, and I now wear shoes without laces when traveling to speed things up a little. For travelers like me who often overnight, there is always a moment of special tension as the security staff don their gloves and rip open your bag in front of the queue at the Gate. DID I FOLD MY DIRTY UNDIES NICELY???!!!!!!

The economic storm also continues across our screens at some pace, the severity of the hangover reflecting the unprecedented length of the drunken binge that corporate America engaged in during the late 1990s. Lots of chest beating about where did the business ethics of this country go, and yearning for simpler times.

The records last less time than a week at the Olympic games - no sooner had Worldcom coughed up to $4b in mis-stated costs; Xerox admits to $6b in mis-stated income. These are blue-chip firms that most people's retirement funds are heavily invested in!

As the US dollar crashes and both the internal and external deficit reach record levels, there are no signs of either a business led recovery (Nasdaq reaching new lows this week) or a consumer side recovery (unemployment at new record high). Bugger. George's answer? Make more cars!

"Economists, heal thyselves!" I say. The singular obsession with 'shareholder value' (ie the price of stocks on the various exchanges) as the one true measure of business progress and value during the 1990s, and the insistence that executives take salary in the form of stock options to ensure they served the other 99% of shareholders interests, resulted in intense massaging of the major lever of share prices - multiples of revenue and profit.

To give you and idea of the scale of the rorting, in 1985 the average annual salary of a Fortune 50 Chief Executive was $900,000 plus up to $200,000 worth of stock in the company. By 2001 those figures had changed to an average salary of $2.9m with stock options of $8m.

Aided and abetted by the Arthur Andersens of the world, people went wild inventing schemes to pump up revenues (or hide expenses) and consequently the worth of their stock options. Be careful what you wish for Gordon Gekko! I'm with Warren Buffett - it took 8 years to get into this mess and it will take 8 years to get out.

The only solace is that two and a half years have already passed, and that Martha Bloody Stewart might get to spend time in sing-sing for insider trading her IMClone stock-holdings.

Handy hints for prison-wives perhaps?

"Stripes are in for 2002!" says www.marthastewartlivinginjail.com.