LAURA SLATTERYlooks back on the week in business
Ad Space
Reebok, a unit of sports giant Adidas, is to pay a $25 million penalty for making unsupported claims about its Easy Tone and Run Tone trainers, which it said would “strengthen and tone key leg and buttock (gluteus maximus) muscles more than regular shoes”.
The US Federal Trade Commission ruled that the advertising claims were false, but though it has coughed up the cash, Adidas/Reebok says it’s only settling “to avoid a protracted legal battle”. The penalty will go towards refunds for consumers whose buttocks were presumably left slightly less toned than they desired. That gluteus maximus will let you down every time.
STATUS UPDATE
Sustainable snacking:Maltesers will carry the Fairtrade mark from 2012, Mars has announced. The Fairtrade Malteser was described as "good news for cocoa farmers".
Cookie queen:Martha Stewart, jailed for insider trading, is now back on the board of the company that bears her name, after a five-year directorship ban. "I feel wonderful," she said.
Crisp burial:The late Arch West, the creator of Doritos, is to be buried with Doritos. This follows the burial of the ashes of the inventor of the Pringles tube in a Pringles tube.
80-Percentage of the US/Canadian tablet market commanded by the Apple iPad – the target for Amazon's cheaper Kindle Fire
THE QUESTION
Is the global financial system beyond satire?
Several years ago, the novelist Hilary Mantel observed that what she called “the City bonus crowd” was beyond satire – nothing a satirist like herself could say or write could be more subversive than the truth. So what about the financial markets in their entirety?
This week's BBC News presenter Martine Croxall hosted an unusually candid interview with "independent trader" Alessio Rastani (below), prompting an "is he/isn't he" a hoaxer debate. Was he, in fact, a member of the activist-pranksters the Yes Men? Was anything he was saying that shocking in itself, or was it just his frankness that caused jaws in the BBC studio to drop? Surely, he's not the only capitalist who "goes to bed dreaming of a recession". Surely, the ability of Goldman Sachs to reap profits from financial crises such as the US sub-prime debacle is well documented. Rastani turned out to be an unregistered, attention-seeking day trader who operates out of a room in his girlfriend's house – a "£200,000 pebbledash semi", said the Daily Mail. But he was not a hoaxer. The Yes Men themselves, whose targets have included the Bush administration and the oil giants, confirmed he was not one of theirs, implying they wouldn't waste their time telling the world such obvious things.
