Now, what is also true is that the decisions that were made over decades put the U.S. auto industry in a bad spot.

WHITEHOUSE: Town Hall in Arnold, Missouri

Case in Point A decade ago, Hewlett-Packard, the legendary garage startup of Dave Packard and Bill Hewlett, was suddenly in a bad spot facing middle age.

FORBES: Digital rules

Admittedly, the CSR was in a bad spot.

ENGADGET: The extremes of technology customer service: how common sense and empathy create unmatched loyalty

Maybe the US is not in as bad a spot as we think, says Mark Weisbrot, an economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington.

FORBES: Is US Debt Problem As Big As The 1990s Latin America Crisis?

So how can you spot a bad customer?

FORBES: Dealing With Bad Customers

Critics who dismissed Thai Rak Thai's platform as cheap populism were missing the point: in a country used to receiving policy edicts from on high, a spot of populism was no bad thing.

ECONOMIST: Pleasing the voters

The current set-up is not all bad: one regulator may spot a problem that another misses.

ECONOMIST: Financial reform in America

Brennan's sending off led to tempers flaring on both benches and players then got involved in a futher spot of pushing and shoving when Shels' Alan Moore produced a bad challenge on sub Peter Hutton.

BBC: Greg O'Halloran tries to turn Derry's Killian Brennan

The app doesn't seem to eat up much space (it occupies 4MB on the device), so it appears to be pulling map data OTA. That's a good thing if you're worried about filling up your G1, but bad if you need info quickly or you're not in a data-gettin' spot.

ENGADGET: An Engadget adventure with TeleNav's G1 GPS software: hands-on, impressions, and video

That spells bad news for retail game stores like Game Spot, although they will continue to do a brisk business in used games.

FORBES: Michael Noer On Digital Entertainment