Reality is that these companies are a lousy value, and very risky.

FORBES: Avoid "Value Traps" - Sell Dell, HP

At the very least, this can mean lousy service and uncompetitive products, and in the worst case, it could mean your bank is heading towards failure.

FORBES: Covering Your Assets: 7 Signs Your Bank May Be Failing

So I'm basically going to find a place that a very, like, kind of lousy, ugly sports bar just around the corner from where the game is.

NPR: Really Important Football Game Coming

The film is often very funny even if you feel lousy about laughing -- except that Baron Cohen hasn't put his own neck on the line like this.

CNN: SHARE THIS

Restaurants lose money on them because consumers flood the restaurants, order very low priced meals, strain waiters and cooks, get lousy service, and never return.

FORBES: Why Restaurant.com (Gallant) Should Trounce Groupon (Goofus)

So now we have a situation, to listen to the Chicken Littles, where the very integrity of the National Basketball Association is being threatened because one lousy, rotten referee apparently tried to manipulate game scores.

NPR: Gambling on the NBA, Oh My!

For example it may become very clear that the marketing team develops poor advertising, the finance team makes lousy forecasts, the sales force is not hitting its distribution goals, or the product development team failed to incorporate key elements.

FORBES: The One Big Thing Successful Innovators Do Differently

And, of course, Albert Einstein, whose very name we use as a short-hand for describing someone as a genius, was a lousy student. (As were many successful CEOs and entrepreneurs.) He literally failed his way through academics.

FORBES: If You Have To Fail -- And You Do -- Fail Forward

Our lineup of suspects includes lousy weather, meddling Massachusetts government, and an overhang of Brahmin social aristocracy that steers the very brightest engineers into research and top business brains toward Bain and BCG.

FORBES: Four Mice Of The Apocalypse