By: Mike Haggerty

Prior to the start of the 2007 Major League Baseball season Jordan’s Furniture ran a promotion. The Massachusetts-based furniture retailer promised full rebates on any sofa, dining table, bed, or mattress bought between March 7 and April 16, if the Red Sox won the World Series. Sounds like a pretty fair bet that 1 team out of the current 30 in the MLB wouldn’t win the World Series that particular year, right? Well, if you said yes, like so many other ignorant economists and financial analysts did, you have recently been proven to be dead wrong.

Bentley’s own David Hauck, a Marketing Major, told Vanguard reporters, “Yeah, of course I thought it was a good idea when I first saw their commercials on TV, who wouldn’t? I mean not only is the furniture company using a professional ball team to promote itself, but it is offering a rebate for any purchase, given some outcome (that the Sox win the 2007 World Series) that the company itself has no control of (although Jordan’s is currently under investigation for various spy gate crimes, as well as intent to sabotage Fenway’s score boards so that they would only show the away team winning). I thought to myself, marketing majors all around the world will look back on today as a monumental day in marketing history. I often would refer to it as ‘the commercial head ’round the world’ in my marketing classes.”

While Dave isn’t alone in his view, )in fact, in a recent, completely random, poll of all the Jordan’s customers who received a full rebate for their purchase, 100% of them thought it was the best thing that they have ever experienced), there are some that claim to have been against the “Ponzi, Bernie Madoff-like, scheme” since the beginning. Mike Slattery told Vanguard reporters that he opposed the idea from the very first commercial he saw on TV. “As a true baseball fan, unlike all those front-runners and fair-weather fans out there, I knew that the Red Sox players as well as the team’s management would do everything in their power to win the 2007 World Series. I knew they weren’t shooting for a very respectable 3^rd in the National League West division, or something normal like that. I had a feeling when they signed Julio Lugo in the offseason that they had their sights set much higher than just simply making it to the Final Four that year, they wanted not just to have their cake, but to eat it as well.”

What has angered those aware of the situation even more is the complete disregard for everyone else’s well-being when Jordan’s bought an insurance policy to cover their incredibly irresponsible promotion. Again, at first this appeared to be a responsible move by the furniture company, however, as with the promotion, the devastating truth would later be revealed. Jordan’s purchased a $20 million insurance policy, which, initially, was a great thing because it greatly increased revenue for the insurance company. As Bentley’s own Matt Haggerty explained to Vanguard reporters, “However, this insurance policy was broken down into many smaller pieces called securities and then sold off to other insurance companies. From there the securities were put on the open market and sold off to banks and other companies that thought the value of these incredibly risky assets would only increase, playing a little Russian roulette. They just kept buying and selling them over and over again. I even saw them listed on websites like Ebay and Craig’s List. I must have written hundreds of emails, but to no avail. Eventually, all I could do was shake my head. I mean, what do I know about complicated stuff like this anyway, I’m only a first semester freshman, who just so happens to be an Economics-Finance Major, I mean, it is my major. It’s not like I don’t eat and breathe this stuff every day of my life, why do you think they pay me the big bucks?”

Finally, in late 2007 the Red Sox won the 2007 World Series and the sh*t hit the fan. The insurance company that had originally backed up the promotion claimed that they had simply misplaced the policy as it had been sold off and re-bought and then sold off again countless times. A Vanguard reporter was told by someone familiar with the matter that the CEO of the company was once told by his father that ‘what you’re looking for is always in the last place you looked. So we decided that the sooner we stopped looking, the sooner we would find it, but for some reason, it wasn’t in the last place we looked, we’re at a real loss here.”

Seeing as Jordan’s did pay $20 million for the promotion policy, they certainly didn’t have to pay back all the customers who participated in the promotion. Therefore the liability was put on the American taxpayers. From there the situation just began to escalate. Consumers began to lose confidence in their banks. Tony Panetti told Vanguard reporters about his deteriorating confidence in his local bank “starting with how they never seemed to have those delicious lollipops for me when I went to the drive through. From there it just got worse as my favorite teller stopped working on Saturdays and I found out that the complimentary hot coffee in the lobby wasn’t Folgers. The coffee was the last straw, I can’t believe they were lying to me all this time, I swear someone told me it was Folgers, then I saw someone making it and found out it was that instant coffee stuff. You just don’t know who you can trust these days.”

Insurance companies around the US began to dig themselves in holes much too deep to get out of. Bentley’s Chris Apuzzo said “it was like the famous word problem every kids gets in 5^th grade where the worm is stuck in a well and climbs 10 feet every day but falls back 8 at night when he is being lazy and sleeping because he has little or no self-respect or pride, or something like that. Then it would ask you how long it would take for the worm to climb out of the well. This is just like that except very different, you know? But what do I know? I’m just a 5^th-grade-word-problem major about to graduate in May; I haven’t been studying this still for the majority of my life or anything.”

In searching for an unbiased opinion, Vanguard reporters asked James Gilloran, a freshman accounting major, as well as a Yankee fan, what he thought of the whole situation. “As far as I’m concerned, the Red Sox and the whole organization are responsible for the crisis we’re in right now. There’s no way they didn’t know about the promotion going on, they could have easily lost that World Series, but no, they just had to win it. I mean, honestly, there’s been like over a hundred World series or something like that, the Yankees have only won 26, and let other people win the other 74 times. The Sox couldn’t let someone else win this one? It’s not like the MLB is going to close up shop any time soon. I just don’t get it.”

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