The STUPID

A Look Back at the Year in Business

John Levesque, David Volk, Sarah Dewey, Anthony Adragna & Karen West | December 2011 | FROM THE PRINT EDITION

Illustrations by Tom Richmond

[investing]
If You Can’t Stand the Heat…
Shortly after giving a roomful of journalists and stockbrokers a positive prognostication of his company’s performance, COINSTAR CEO Paul Davis left the 28th annual “Guess the Dow” lunch at the Metropolitan Grill just as salads were being served. It didn’t take the assemblage long to guess the reason for his early departure. Coinstar had just reported missing its fourth-quarter profit projections by a wide margin. — D.V.

[banking]
How Can We Say Goodbye if you Won’t Go Away?
Washington Mutual’s banks may have ceased to exist when Chase took over, but that’s not the end of the story. The saga continued this year when WaMu executives avoided criminal charges in court. And in September, the federal bankruptcy judge overseeing the case rejected WaMu’s bankruptcy plan for the second time and ordered Chase and WaMu into mediation, saying she was “concerned that the case will devolve into a litigation morass.” Um, isn’t it a bit late for that? — D.V.

[consumerism]
Entitlement is Habit Forming
Seems odd that a movement dedicated to taking on the gimme, gimme, gimme culture of Wall Street would be issuing demands of its own, but that’s exactly what Occupy Seattle did in October when Mayor Mike McGinn suggested the demonstrators move from Westlake Park to City Hall Plaza. In exchange for switching locations, Occupy Seattle demanded, among other things, four large tents and a free parking spot (for supply purposes). Shortly after those demands were issued, it is assumed someone with a little more sense demanded that Occupy Seattle get a clue. — J.L.

___________________

HALL OF SHAME
Here at Seattle Business magazine we have a Hall of Shame for people who’ve done things so despicable that we’d almost prefer not to mention them if their acts weren’t so amusing, puzzling or flat out bizarre. This year’s inductees:

[law]
Two-ring Circus
The Washington Mutual bankruptcy case may be complicated, but it’s nothing compared to the story of former Seattle developer Michael Mastro’s multimillion-dollar bankruptcy mess. Fortunately, the biggest battle in the ongoing story this year was easy to understand: It centered on his wife’s enormous, uh, diamonds. Although a first bankruptcy judge ruled that two of Linda Mastro’s rings, valued at $1.4 million, were her exclusive property, the judge who took