I’m sure you have, by now, heard the news. Hostess Brands, the company that gave us such remembered childhood treats as Twinkies, Ding Dongs, Devil Dogs and other baked foodstuffs that have fallen into disfavor in our more gourmand age, announced today that it would be closing for business, effective immediately.

Box of Twinkies (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

More than a few observers say they know who to blame for the demise of the iconic company: the Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International union, which represents thousands of striking Hostess Brand workers who have refused to accept a new contract that would do everything from slash their salaries to their retirement benefits.

Hostess has been sold at least three times since the 1980s, racking up debt and shedding profitable assets along the way with each successive merger. The company filed for bankruptcy in 2004, and again in 2011. Little thought was given to the line of products, which, frankly, began to seem a bit dated in the age of the gourmet cupcake. (100 calorie Twinkie Bites? When was the last time you entered Magnolia Bakery and asked about the calorie count?)

As if all this were not enough, Hostess Brands’ management gave themselves several raises, all the while complaining that the workers who actually produced the products that made the firm what money it did earn were grossly overpaid relative to the company’s increasingly dismal financial position.

So now an estimated 18,500 workers will join the nation’s unemployment rolls. But while Hostess Brands might soon become a forgotten name from the past, it’s unlikely such a fate awaits such signature products as Twinkies. Company executives have already asked for bankruptcy court permission to begin the process of selling off their famed product lines to other companies.

Finally, a personal note: A few years ago, my husband picked our children up from a playdate at a home where, he said, it seemed like more food was banned than allowed, there was no television, and it was all too politically correct in the way all too many middle class childhoods are today. My husband’s response? Before bringing the boys home, he stopped in at a local grocery and introduced our ecstatic children to fine products of Hostess Brands. “Yodels,” he told me, “never tasted so good.”

Addendum: Since this has come up in the comments, I need to remind everyone that Hostess Brands acquired Drake’s Cakes in one the many of the misbegotten mergers it was involved in.

I let the doctor talk me into a flu shot during my annual physical this week, and I’ve had a bit of a reaction to it.  I bled, my arm swelled up, and now I’ve got the mini-flu.  So, needing a laugh, I am thankful to friend and great speaker Micah Solomon, guru of customer service in the digital era, for sending me a link to the Onion TED-talk spoof.  It’s fun, you’ll get a laugh or two, and it’s not even 20 minutes long.

It got me thinking about the serious faux pas underlying this spoof – what to avoid (besides flu shots) when you’re speaking in public so that you don’t end up spoofing yourself.

1.  Kill the clichés.  There are some things speakers just shouldn’t say.  “It’s not the destination; it’s the journey.”  “This is a paradigm-shifting idea.”  “We’ll get synergy.”  The Onion talk starts with killing two birds with one stone and then runs with it brilliantly.

2.  Block the extended metaphor.   For some reason, speakers find it hard to resist, once they’ve begun with a metaphor, especially a sports metaphor, keeping it going long beyond what decency and sanity dictates.  Metaphors are moments, not arguments.  Don’t hang your rhetorical structure on them.

3.  Take a humility pill.   Audiences care more about themselves and their own problems than you, the speaker.  So don’t make the talk about how you’re feeling, or the fascinating process by which you arrived at your current state of grace.   Of course, to set against that, audiences do love it when the speaker shares a little of her life story – a relevant bit – because that humanizes her.  The trick is knowing how much to share and when to stop.  Tip:  connect it to a concern the audience has.

4.  Don’t abuse the slides.   I’ve ranted against the misuse of Power Point and other slide software many times, but the Onion spoof shows that slides can be dumb even when they’re well-designed and avoid the obvious pitfalls like using them as speaker notes.  In this case, they go wrong 2 ways.  First, they illustrate things that don’t need to be illustrated.  Everyone knows what a traffic jam looks like; we don’t need a picture.  Second, they illustrate with generic pictures, not real ones.  We don’t need a picture of just any car, we need a picture of the car.

5.  Share the limelight.  You have temporary charge of that roomful of people as a speaker; you are the authority.  The greatest gift you can give that audience, then, is to share the limelight with them.  Far too many speakers don’t leave space in their speeches for the audience, beyond the lame and obvious “Show of hands; how many people here are givers, not takers?”  Find ways to make your speech genuinely and usefully interactive.  It’s not about you; it’s about the audience, always.

Here’s the Onion ‘TED’ talk.  Enjoy!

What is good life? What is happiness? What is success? What is pleasure? How should I treat other people? How should I cope with unfortunate events? How can I get rid off unnecessary worry? How should I handle liberty?

The answers to all these questions are condensed in a little book, The Ten Golden Rules I co-authored with Michael Soupios:

1. Examine life, engage life with vengeance; always search for new pleasures and new destines to reach with your mind. This rule isn’t new. It echoes the verses of ancient Greek philosophers and most notably those of Plato through the voice of his hero, Socrates.  Living life is about examining life through reason, nature’s greatest gift to humanity. The importance of reason in sensing and examining life is evident in all phases of life– from the infant who strains to explore its new surroundings to the grandparent who actively reads and assesses the headlines of the daily paper.  Reason lets human beings participate in life, to be human is to think, appraise, and explore the world, discovering new sources of material and spiritual pleasure.

2. Worry only about the things that are in your control, the things that can be influenced and changed by your actions, not about the things that are beyond your capacity to direct or alter. This rule summarizes several important features of ancient Stoic wisdom — features that remain powerfully suggestive for modern times. Most notably the belief in an ultimately rational order operating in the universe reflecting a benign providence that ensures proper outcomes in life.  Thinkers such as Epictetus did not simply prescribe “faith” as an abstract philosophical principle; they offered a concrete strategy based on intellectual and spiritual discipline.  The key to resisting the hardship and discord that intrude upon every human life, is to cultivate a certain attitude toward adversity based on the critical distinction between those things we are able to control versus those which are beyond our capacity to manage.  The misguided investor may not be able to recover his fortune but he can resist the tendency to engage in self-torment. The victims of a natural disaster, a major illness or an accident may not be able to recover and live their lives the way they used to, but they too can save themselves the self-torment.   In other words, while we cannot control all of the outcomes we seek in life, we certainly can control our responses to these outcomes and herein lies our potential for a life that is both happy and fulfilled.

3. Treasure Friendship, the reciprocal attachment that fills the need for affiliation. Friendship cannot be acquired in the market place, but must be nurtured and treasured in relations imbued with trust and amity. According to Greek philosophy, one of the defining characteristics of humanity that distinguishes it from other forms of existence is a deeply engrained social instinct, the need for association and affiliation with others, a need for friendship. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle viewed the formation of society as a reflection of the profound need for human affiliation rather than simply a contractual arrangement between otherwise detached individuals. Gods and animals do not have this kind of need but for humans it is an indispensable aspect of the life worth living because one cannot speak of a completed human identity, or of true happiness, without the associative bonds called “friendship.” No amount of wealth, status, or power can adequately compensate for a life devoid of genuine friends.

4. Experience True Pleasure. Avoid shallow and transient pleasures. Keep your life simple. Seek calming pleasures that contribute to peace of mind. True pleasure is disciplined and restrained. In its many shapes and forms, pleasure is what every human being is after. It is the chief good of life. Yet not all pleasures are alike. Some pleasures are kinetic—shallow, and transient, fading way as soon as the act that creates the pleasure ends. Often they are succeeded by a feeling of emptiness and psychological pain and suffering. Other pleasures are catastematic—deep, and prolonged, and continue even after the act that creates them ends; and it is these pleasures that secure the well-lived life. That’s the message of the Epicurean philosophers that have been maligned and misunderstood for centuries, particularly in the modern era where their theories of the good life have been confused with doctrines advocating gross hedonism.

5. Master Yourself. Resist any external force that might delimit thought and action; stop deceiving yourself, believing only what is personally useful and convenient; complete liberty necessitates a struggle within, a battle to subdue negative psychological and spiritual forces that preclude a healthy existence; self mastery requires ruthless cador. One of the more concrete ties between ancient and modern times is the idea that personal freedom is a highly desirable state and one of life’s great blessings. Today, freedom tends to be associated, above all, with political liberty. Therefore, freedom is often perceived as a reward for political struggle, measured in terms of one’s ability to exercise individual “rights.”

The ancients argued long before Sigmund Freud and the advent of modern psychology that the acquisition of genuine freedom involved a dual battle. First, a battle without, against any external force that might delimit thought and action. Second, a battle within, a struggle to subdue psychological and spiritual forces that preclude a healthy self-reliance. The ancient wisdom clearly recognized that humankind has an infinite capacity for self-deception, to believe what is personally useful and convenient at the expense of truth and reality, all with catastrophic consequences. Individual investors often deceive themselves by holding on to shady stocks, believing what they want to believe. They often end up blaming stock analysts and stockbrokers when the truth of the matter is they are the ones who eventually made the decision to buy them in the first place. Students also deceive themselves believing that they can pass a course without studying, and end up blaming their professors for their eventual failure. Patients also deceive themselves that they can be cured with convenient “alternative medicines,” which do not involve the restrictive lifestyle of conventional methods.

6. Avoid Excess. Live life in harmony and balance. Avoid excesses. Even good things, pursued or attained without moderation, can become a source of misery and suffering. This rule is echoed in the writings of ancient Greek thinkers who viewed moderation as nothing less than a solution to life’s riddle. The idea of avoiding the many opportunities for excess was a prime ingredient in a life properly lived, as summarized in Solon’s prescription “Nothing in Excess” (6^th Century B.C.).  The Greeks fully grasped the high costs of passionate excess. They correctly understood that when people violate the limits of a reasonable mean, they pay penalties ranging from countervailing frustrations to utter catastrophe. It is for this reason that they prized ideals such as measure, balance, harmony, and proportion as much as they did, the parameters within which productive living can proceed. If, however, excess is allowed to destroy harmony and balance, then the life worth living becomes impossible to obtain.

7. Be a Responsible Human Being. Approach yourself with honesty and thoroughness; maintain a kind of spiritual hygiene; stop the blame-shifting for your errors and shortcomings. Be honest with yourself and be prepared to assume responsibility and accept consequences. This rule comes from Pythagoras, the famous mathematician and mystic, and has special relevance for all of us because of the common human tendency to reject responsibility for wrongdoing. Very few individuals are willing to hold themselves accountable for the errors and mishaps that inevitably occur in life.  Instead, they tend to foist these situations off on others complaining of circumstances “beyond their control.” There are, of course, situations that occasionally sweep us along, against which we have little or no recourse. But the far more typical tendency is to find ourselves in dilemmas of our own creation — dilemmas for which we refuse to be held accountable. How many times does the average person say something like, “It really wasn’t my fault. If only John or Mary had acted differently then I would not have responded as I did.” Cop-outs like these are the standard reaction for most people. They reflect an infinite human capacity for rationalization, finger-pointing, and denial of responsibility. Unfortunately, this penchant for excuses and self-exemption has negative consequences. People who feed themselves a steady diet of exonerating fiction are in danger of living life in bad faith — more, they risk corrupting their very essence as a human being.

8. Don’t Be a Prosperous Fool. Prosperity by itself, is not a cure-all against an ill-led life, and may be a source of dangerous foolishness. Money is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for the good life, for happiness and wisdom. Prosperity has different meanings to different people. For some, prosperity is about the accumulation of wealth in the form of money, real estate and equities. For others, prosperity is about the accumulation of power and the achievement of status that comes with appointment to business or government positions. In either case, prosperity requires wisdom: the rational use of one’s resources and in the absence of such wisdom, Aeschylus was correct to speak of prosperous fools.

9. Don’t Do Evil to Others. Evildoing is a dangerous habit, a kind of reflex too quickly resorted to and too easily justified that has a lasting and damaging effect upon the quest for the good life. Harming others claims two victims—the receiver of the harm, and the victimizer, the one who does harm.

Contemporary society is filled with mixed messages when it comes to the treatment of our fellow human beings. The message of the Judaeo-Christian religious heritage, for instance, is that doing evil to others is a sin, extolling the virtues of mercy, forgiveness, charity, love, and pacifism. Yet, as we all know, in practice these inspiring ideals tend to be in very short supply. Modern society is a competitive, hard-bitten environment strongly inclined to advocate self-advantage at the expense of the “other.” Under these conditions, it is not surprising that people are often prepared to harm their fellow human beings. These activities are frequently justified by invoking premises such as “payback,” “levelling scores,” or “doing unto others, before they can do unto you.” Implicit in all of these phrases is the notion that malice towards others can be justified on either a reciprocal basis or as a pre-emptive gesture in advance of anticipated injury. What is not considered here are the effects these attempts to render evil have upon the person engaging in such attempts. Our culture has naively assumed that “getting even” is an acceptable response to wrongdoing — that one bad-turn deserves another. What we fail to understand is the psychological, emotional, and spiritual impact victimizing others has upon the victimizer.

10. Kindness towards others tends to be rewarded. Kindness to others is a good habit that supports and reinforces the quest for the good life. Helping others bestows a sense of satisfaction that has two beneficiaries—the beneficiary, the receiver of the help, and the benefactor, the one who provides the help.

Many of the world’s great religions speak of an obligation to extend kindness to others. But these deeds are often advocated as an investment toward future salvation — as the admission ticket to paradise. That’s not the case for the ancient Greeks, however, who saw kindness through the lens of reason, emphasizing the positive effects acts of kindness have not just on the receiver of kindness but to the giver of kindness as well, not for the salvation of the soul in the afterlife, but in this life. Simply put, kindness tends to return to those who do kind deeds, as Aesop demonstrated in his colourful fable of a little mouse cutting the net to free the big lion. Aesop lived in the 6^th century B.C. and acquired a great reputation in antiquity for the instruction he offered in his delightful tales. Despite the passage of many centuries, Aesop’s counsels have stood the test of time because in truth, they are timeless observations on the human condition; as relevant and meaningful today as they were 2,500 years ago.

Remember one month ago, when the S&P500 (NYSE:SPY) was heading for 1500, and investors seem to think that equities are the best game in town. Now the S&P500 is heading for 1300 (losing more than 100 points), investors are running away from equities. What has changed in one month?

On the political front a lot. America has a new President and China has a new political leadership. On the economic front not much. The world macroeconomic environment continues to remain challenging, corporations report mixed results, uncle Ben is ready for another round of QE, and traders continue to debate the fiscal cliff. What can then explain, this big change in investor sentiment?

Emotions.

Humans are both intelligent and emotional beings. Intelligent beings decide by reason, by carefully examining the parameters of the environment they live in, setting goals and priorities and crafting alternative strategies and tactics to reach them. Intelligent consumers, for instance, carefully examine their economic situation, taking stock of their human and non-human resources, ranking and prioritizing their needs and desires—the need to be satisfied first, second, and so on—in order to derive the maximum return from their human and non-human resources, as it is taught in standard economic books.

Emotional beings decide by impulse rather than reason, fueled by anxiety, anger, fear, greed, complacency, etc., ignoring the environment they live in, failing to set goals and priorities, craft strategies and tactics. Emotional consumers, for instance, fail to take stock of their human and non-human resources, and to prioritize their needs and desires. Instead, they act out of impulse, rushing and racing to buy products filling the needs and desires of ruthless marketers, rather than their own.

The intelligent and the emotional side of human beings come out in investing. Intelligent investors make decisions by carefully examining their financial priorities and constrains, and the “economic fundamentals,” the macroeconomic and microeconomic environment that surrounds financial markets.

Emotional investors, by contrast, make decisions by impulse and hype fueled by irrational exuberance and irrational pessimism, rather than reason. They rush and race to buy or sell stocks, simply by listening to “experts,” stockbrokers, financial analysts, and portfolio managers who come up with one story or another to support an everlasting trend.

Irrational exuberance and irrational pessimism is more pronounced in momentum investing whereby investors chase after popular stocks—networking in the late 1990s like JDS Uniphase (NASDAQ:JDSU), Ciena (NASDAQ:CIEN), Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO), and Lucent-Alcatel (NYSE:ALU) that now trade at a fraction of their 2001 highs.

Emotional investors fail to separate the news from the noise, selling stocks with good and bad fundamentals alike. On Friday, for instance, investors were selling off the stock of Sears (NASDAQ:SHLD), which reported disappointing earnings, and the stock of Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), which didn’t have any major corporate developments.

Emotional investors behave like a herd copying and replicating the behavior of one another, fearing that they will miss out on a market uptrend or be crashed in the market downtrend. They end up amassing and losing fortunes without fully realizing it.