Since we save the bad news for last, here's Friday's log of the week's flops and failures:

-Continental said this week that the airline industry is in an ongoing "crisis." After stating the obvious, they then announced that they're laying off 3,000 employees and plan to reduce capacity by 11%. So long as they don't take away my nuts too, everything's kosher.

-More trouble for Detroit this week as well. General Motors announced that they're closing four truck-making plants in an attempt to respond to the demand for smaller, more fuel-efficient cars. GMs stock has fallen more than 40% in the past year, leading the company's execs to make the decision to skew production towards cars.

-It's not exactly a flop, but yesterday Verizon agreed to purchase alt wireless carrrier Alltel for $28.1 billion—which would make the conglomerate the largest cell phone service providers in the nation. Frankly, we're sad to see Alltel go—it's a fair bet that those "wizard" commercials making fun of Verizon and the other wireless carriers have already been pulled from the tube. RIP, buddy.