Neff Zone Column -- February 28, 2009

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Print Edition: February 28, 2009

CEO’S AND CYBERCHONDRIA

Outta the Zone…You have to love those zany CEO’s. You know, the people who continue to rake in huge bonuses because the companies for which they work don’t want to lose them. Gee, if a company were to lose one of these geniuses where would they ever find a replacement genius? Well, after reeling in the bonuses and then accepting government bailout money the question is, "where are they spending that money?" I can’t answer that, but I do know where they are NOT spending the money; they are NOT buying stock in their own companies. According to Thomson Reuters news service over the last 90 days the CEO’s of top American companies have purchased just $670 million worth of stock in their own companies while they’ve sold off $2.8 billion. Darren Roulstone, a professor at Ohio State, calls this "a little disturbing." Yup, it is, because these same CEO’s tell us peons to spend and invest and meanwhile they are selling and hoarding.

…I’m sure high among those CEO madcaps is the head guy at ExxonMobil, the company that quarter after quarter continues to post the largest profits ever recorded in world history. Despite all the malarkey about how they need to go out and explore more territory so they can "drill, baby, drill" they managed to increase their proven reserves by 1.5 billion oil-equivalent barrels in 2008. That means if they don’t find another drop of new oil they can sustain their current production levels for 15.3 years. Actually that’s good news because now they have plenty of time to figure out how to charge us for the sun.

…Another CEO you have to love is the peanut guy, Stewart Parnell. He’s the guy who appeared before Congress and repeatedly took the Fifth. The most mind boggling thing to me about the whole peanut debacle is the fact that the Peanut Corporation of America operated a plant in Plainview, Texas that went unlicensed and uninspected for years because according to the state of Texas and local authorities they "didn’t know the plant was there." Think about the absurdity of that statement. Plainview is a town of around 25,000, not much bigger than Cadillac. There was a factory in that town that local and state officials didn’t know existed? Didn’t any local people work there? Weren’t any paychecks bearing the company’s address cashed? Didn’t anyone notice traffic going to and from the plant? Didn’t the plant use electricity, water, or sewage services? No one from the government showed up to demand taxes? Boy, Howdy, the people who own factories in Cadillac must really be stupid. If I was them I’d import one of these PCA plant managers to make their Cadillac facilities invisible. Think of the money they’d save.

…Meanwhile, back in the real world, it looks like average Americans are proving the old adage that "less is more." We’re tightening our belts and in some ways it’s a good thing. For example, sales of pasta products are up 5% as we turn to more soups and noodles to stretch our food dollars. We’re also taking advantage of board games, which are way cheaper than electronic games and (as we’re rediscovering) just as much fun. By the way, the top ten all-time Hasbro board games are (from ten to one): Chutes and Ladders, Clue, Battleship, Sorry, Connect Four, Life, Operation, Candyland, Yahtzee, and (leading the pack) Monopoly.

…Americans may be scaling back on a lot of things but one thing that is on the increase is hypochondria. In fact, with so much extra time on our hands because we’re staying home more we’ve developed a whole new syndrome – cyberchondria. This occurs when people spend massive amounts of time on Internet medical websites, plug in their real or supposed maladies, and come up with life-ending diagnoses. Says Dr. Anthony Douglas, an internist in Florida, "There are plenty of sites where you can type in your symptoms and 92% of the diagnoses have the patient dying within a week." Cyberchondria can quickly get out of hand, like the case where a mother was convinced her son had a cancerous tumor on his leg that turned out to be a blob of hardened grape jelly.

There are two things doctors are noticing about this stampede to self-diagnosis. One is that the type of perceived illness is related to whatever malady is in the current news. Also, doctors say they get more calls from cyberchondriacs on Mondays, after patients have had all weekend to research and hence worry for a couple of days about their impending doom.

I guess the bottom line is that you want to be proactive about your health care but you also need to let the professionals do the diagnosing. Besides, if cyberchondriacs waste doctors’ time with phony problems, then the doctors will have less time to search for cures for real things, like how to make me taller. Wait a minute, I’ll bet I can find the cure for shortandbalditis on the Internet!

…Finally, as everyone know I intensely dislike the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) as a way to determine a national college football champion, favoring instead some sort of playoff. Supposedly, the winner of the BCS championship game is the champion of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). That’s why the statement this week from NCAA President Miles Brand was a stunner for me. Brand said: "The NCAA has no control over the major college football postseason."

Say what? Brand is telling us that the reason the NCAA cannot hold a playoff is because the organization has "no control" over what its member institutions do after the "regular season" concludes. I interpret this as basically saying that the BCS is a non-NCAA sanctioned bunch of exhibition games. Since the NCAA has "no control," then the only conclusion one can draw is that the winner of the BCS is not the NCAA national champion.

Gee, here’s a thought. Why doesn’t the NCAA set us some sort of system to determine the real NCAA-sanctioned champion? You know, something over which they actually have control.

Jim Neff is a local columnist. Comments to neffzone@gmail.com. Read Neff Zone columns online at www.neffzone.com/cadillacnews.