Wall Street Logic Got You Twisted in Knots?

We're not looking at the kind of money a major bank or a Wall Street brokerage can lose when they really set their minds to it. What's more, sales of replacement tires (the source of some 80% of Goodyear's profits) are pretty bad too, right about now. All told, units moved are off 20% and dollar sales are down 28%.

And while the recession may be deeper in some parts of the country than in others, Goodyear's declines were remarkably evenhanded: All four of their sales regions saw marked falloffs.Looking forward, most analysts figure that we have at least three, if not five, more quarters of pain like this coming down the pike. Chrysler's bondholders just decided to take 20 cents on the dollar in cash now, rather than any deal involving stock shares. If GM isn't bankrupt by this time next week, it will certainly be a fraction of its former size.

If those guys can't flush a couple of billion a quarter down the crapper, then they just aren't trying very hard.An expense like that for the C-suite could elevate the most prosaic Akron CEO to the same level as such exalted poster children of failure as Bank of America's Ken Lewis (not fired - yet), Societe Generale's Daniel Bouton (finally "quit" his position as Board Chairman), or maybe Bernard Madoff (jailed pretty much forever).