Biggest Business Blunders of 2024

It was an ignominious year for economic forecasters, CrowdStrike, Boeing, FTX, Mattel, Truth Social, Red Lobster, Fisker, Spirit Airlines, TicketMaster and the dumbest bank embezzler in history

“The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.” – Henry Ford.

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Business Blunders happen even in a growing economy. Bankruptcies never go out of style. Fools keep parting with their money. And the cycle of fear and greed never ends.

Here are some of the biggest Business Blunders of 2024.

It’s the economy, stupid

Predictions are a fool’s game, especially with an economy driven by greed, fear and rising government debt. (Illustration credit: AI generaated.)

The biggest blunder of the year was a widespread misperception about the strength of the economy.

In the first quarter of 2024, the nation’s most prominent prognosticators finally admitted they were wrong about a coming recession. But most Americans held fast to their wrong-headed views, mostly because of political attacks leveraging anger about inflation.

The nation’s economy grew all year long and is in fact the envy of the world with a gross national product that grew 3.1% in the third quarter. The stock market remains near all-time highs. The unemployment rate is at a historically vibrant 4.1% and inflation is running at 2.7%, down from 9.1% in June 2022.

To be sure, the price of just about everything is still painful, but that’s not how to measure the strength of an economy. Homeowners and stock investors, for example, have done quite well during this period of incessant partisan whining.

Economists and politicians who put undue credit or blame on a single president for the performance of a massive economy are either dishonest or need to take an Econ 101 course.

Do they really think the new administration is going to do better (assuming that presidents really have all that much to do with it, anyway)?

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