“New Starbucks Opens In Rest Room Of Existing Starbucks”
- One of the finest ever headlines from ‘The Onion’.
“Eventually, Starbucks rest rooms everywhere will sell coffee,” [Starbucks CEO Howard] Schultz said. “In the meantime, we plan to open an additional location in this Starbucks’ ladies’ room within months, and are already drafting plans for a fourth restaurant along the corridor leading from the main seating area to the rest rooms. At some point a ‘Starbucks Express’ window will eventually open in the walk-in closet of the men’s room Starbucks.”
- From the same story.
When this excellent satire on Starbucks’ expansionism first surfaced in June 1998, the markets were enjoying the fruits of a technology boom. (If you failed to participate in that comparatively short-lived opportunity to make reckless profits, you may, if you prefer, call it a bubble.) Back then, US policy rates stood at a now extraordinary-looking 8.5%. If we see their like again, any time soon, they will be rapidly en route to something closer to 1,000%. This time round, as Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz attacks speculators for pushing up the price of coffee – assuming this is a component of any product at Starbucks – US policy rates (more specifically, the target rate for fed funds) stand at 0 – 0.25%. Schultz was aiming at the wrong target. If he wanted to identify the real culprit, for dizzying volatility in commodity prices and much else besides, he should have lambasted the developed world’s central banks.
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