Dumbest Moments in Business 2009

CNNMoney via Yahoo! ^

[1rudeboy]

Loudmouth CEOs, islands in the desert and bringing dead celebrities back to life. Our annual list of the business world's bonehead plays marches on.

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Trading GM's Worthless Stock

GM couldn't sell enough cars to keep out of bankruptcy, but plenty of its worthless stock sure got sold afterwards.

The old version of the company, now known as Motors Liquidation, was left with GM's debt, unwanted plants and dealerships, and its old shares, which trade under the symbol MTLQQ for about 60 cents apiece.

Oddly enough, investor demand has been brisk even though GM and the Securities and Exchange Commission have warned that the shares will become utterly worthless once the entire bankruptcy process is complete.

The last week of August saw more MTLQQ shares change hands than shares of blue chips such as Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola or Apple.

U.S. Debt Is 'Safe.' Seriously. Stop Laughing

Courtesy: U.S. Department of the Treasury

Following a speech at Peking University on his first trip to China as Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner was asked to share his thoughts about the safety of Chinese investments in the United States.

They are "VERY safe," he quickly asserted.

At which point the audience burst out laughing.

Apparently, the audience was amused not only by the answer's substance, but by the flat "don't worry your little young heads about it" certainty with which Geithner insisted that China's U.S. debt holdings were A-OK. Because as even a group of Chinese college kids understood, that's just not as clear as the Treasury Secretary insisted it was.

[1rudeboy]

There are some real gems.