Tiger Woods sure is having a really bad time of late.

Of course, everyone now knows the trouble he’s had with his wife because of his serial infidelity — and his wife has redefined the use of a golf club.

But more than the bump on the head and the humiliation that followed suit, Tiger Woods’ reputation has been tarnished and this is affecting his bottomline. How? His endorsements are now jeopardized.

Companies hire celebrities and sports superstars to hawk their products because they want to ride on these people’s reputation and image. The better the image, the better the effect of the endorsements. Tiger’s troubles are not helping his reputation at all and the companies that hired him are realizing that they should cut their losses as soon as a possible. Accenture has already announced that they have ended their relationship with the superstar golfer. Gillette has also released a statement that they have suspended his endorsement deal.

Woods’ troubles means lost revenues for him and maybe, just maybe, companies will also realize that putting their reputations at stake by hiring people is not really a good strategy.

Golf champion Tiger Woods no longer represents global consulting and technology services firm Accenture, as of December 13. Accenture is the first of Woods’ corporate sponsors to pull out of the relationship completely. A day earlier, Gillette announced a suspension of Woods’ marketing appearances for an unspecified period.

For anyone missing two weeks of headlines, here’s a recap. Golf champion Woods crashed his car near his Florida home after what appeared to be a major league (oops, wrong sport) fight with his wife over alleged infidelities. At first Woods denied any marital misconduct, using the first line of defense of many public figures caught in a sand trap, which was to lie about it. Then other women surfaced with firm evidence of Woods’ affairs, for a total of 13, and Woods told the world that he had made mistakes. On December 11, he announced he is taking a mega-mulligan — a leave of absence from golf to repair his marriage.

Though Accenture doesn’t sell anything to consumers, it put itself in the public eye with its “Go ahead, be a Tiger” ad campaign. Working for Accenture since 2004, Woods seemed a plausible long-term choice. His consistently stellar athletic achievements and mixed racial heritage symbolize the best of a global economy. Now his departure could mark a seismic shift in corporate branding and marketing approaches.

As a hard core player of Zynga Games‘ Mafia Wars on Facebook, I often imagine that making money in the real world is as easy making money in Mafia Wars. I’m nearing my first billion dollars in the New York area and I always wish that money can just pile up like that with the minimum of effort.

Well, it looks like Zynga is living the reality of our collective fantasy. The prolific game developer for Facebook (who is responsible for many game properties in the popular social networking site) is reportedly now worth $1 billion if the sale price of a small competitor is going to be the basis.

Electronic Arts recently bought Playfish for about three to four times what the company is making and since Zynga’s revenue is so much bigger than Playfish, the computation is that Zynga could be valued at $1 billion. That’s a lot of money to buy Casinos and Beach Front Properties although it’s still chump change compared to what you earn in Mafia Wars.

Zynga’s value could easily make it the third largest videogame publisher in the United States. Expect the clamor for Zynga to go public to increase in the next few months. If I can withdraw my Mafia Wars money, I’d bet it all on Zynga.

Mobile phone companies are earning a lot of money through its added services, particularly text messaging. Text messaging is the most used mobile phone feature right after voice calls. Actually, I think text messages are more commonly used rather than voice calls.

This doesn’t mean people should send text messages wherever they are. I’ve seen people texting even while driving, what seems to be a physical impossibility is being done with impunity by a lot of people. Thankfully, more rational minds are beginning to see the dangers of texting while driving.

US Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood wants to make it illegal to text while driving and he has publicly denounced the practice with the same level of gravity as drunk driving and wearing seatbelts.

About 16 percent of deadly crashes that happened in 2008 involved a driver whose attention was distracted in one way or another. This is an 11 percent increase from figures posted in 2005.

This is the right move to make. I’ve seen motorists who text while driving and they are road hazards. They’re so dangerous on the road that I want to shove their phones down their throats.

Vacation timeshares started becoming popular in the 1970s because it’s a great way of spending a vacation without paying too much.

But even a “budget” level vacation option is getting a drubbing because of the recession. According to the American Resort Develpment Association, timeshares sales may drop by 30 percent this year, compared to sales figures posted last year. The Association also said that selling timeshares will be a big challenge for the next 18 months.

I think that these are obvious conclusions. With so many people defaulting on their mortgages and losing jobs, buying a timeshare in some vacation locale is just a bad decision. Timeshares are considered “perpetual vacations” and with everyone scrambling to save every precious dollar, vacations should be farthest on their minds.

Talk about a knee-jerk reaction.

Reacting to the swine flu scare, Egypt President Hosni Mubarak ordered the slaughter of the country’s 300,000 pigs. Unfortunately, the government has also forgotten one crucial fact — those same pigs are helping the country by eating its organic waste.

Now that those pig “cleaners” are in hog heaven, the country’s garbage is beginning to pile up, it has also affected the livelihood of the zabaleen — freelance trash collectors and pig farmers. An estimated 70,000 families are now suffering from this short-sighted government response to the swine flu scare.

Experts say that the Egyptian government failed to consider the economic ramifications of their kill-all-pigs policy and its people are suffering because of it.

Epic fail, Egyptian government.

Chrysler tries to beat total collapse by getting aid from the government in the form of $4 Billion dollars last January is again getting protection with the blessing of the White House by filing for bankruptcy. The globally charismatic President Obama whom people simply cannot get enough of carries a sense of something everywhere he goes, call it charisma or call it the change he is promoting in the government but many favor his style, well not all. There will always be detractors for as the eternal Continue reading »

Talk about the lack of control and forward thinking, in the UK, health officials released a drug-dependent schizophrenic on the grounds that his out-patient treatment would be monitored by health servicemen that just didn’t happen. The outcome, the drug-laden man goes on a rampage eventually killing a police officer in the process before being stopped by other police officers. The man was released to care for himself, expected to take all his necessary medication with NHS people supposedly to go check in on him regularly for progress and evaluation of his case. He misses his scheduled check-ups, eludes health officials who by the way fail to inform the police that a dangerous man is at large which could have gotten him back into custody for his and the general public’s safety. Continue reading »

The housing market crash that is currently bringing chaos to the many homeowners who stand to lose their homes even with the ton’s of bailout money the government is shelling out is far from over. From the idiots at wall street and the banking sector who conjured out home packages that required no collateral to the very top levels of the housing market giants, Freddie and Fannie who are two of the biggest players in the housing industry they all benefited from the billions of dollars that the market earned. To make matter worse, all the watchdogs watching the watchdogs all knew this was happening and they simply looked the other way, till the market crashed and everybody started pointing fingers at everybody else. Continue reading »

The economic crisis has many a companies fighting for survival and yet out of the blue an underdog in the It industry made it big and even managed to post earnings. Apple has managed to post good profits in spite of the economic downturn which may be reason for a former CFO ratting out on the company’s CEO Steve Jobs. They’ve been at it for a while and it seems that the capitalist mind is hard at work trying to get the better of both of them. The stocks issues and many other financial information that was leaked to the SEC has Jobs in hot water for seemingly unfair stock options in terms of ownership of the company. The truth is out there somewhere yet many questions still have to be addressed Continue reading »

The effects of the recession may be bad, bad enough to get a 13-year old boy to get the bright idea of robbing a bank for some extra cash. The boy was caught red-handed, literally when dye packs blew and stained him red. According to police records, he is the youngest ever bank robber who has ever been documented making parents shiver at the thought of the way these kids are dealing with the hardships of life in today’s challenging times. They truly are getting younger, may be all those violent video Continue reading »