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2. Steve & Barry Lose Their Shirts

Much to the chagrin of Sarah Jessica Parker, Stephon Marbury, Venus Williams and General Electric (GE Quote), Steve & Barry's, a mall-based vendor of dirt-cheap shirts and shoes, has proven to be a colossal bust.

The defunct shirt-selling duo have left GE, which lent S&B nearly $200 million in March, grieving. The Sex and the City star, the basketball phenom and the Wimbledon champ, whose signature clothing lines survive the store that sells them, will probably need a mourning period as well.

After Steve & Barry flirted with Sears Holdings (SHLD Quote) in hopes of a bailout or sale of some of its labels (these are hard times indeed when anyone goes hat in hand to Sears), the company filed for bankruptcy Wednesday, blaming liquidity trouble.

Paradoxically, sales had been booming at $1.1 billion annually -- and same-store sales were growing at 20%. A shocked lawyer for Parker told The New York Times, "We are surprised because our understanding, based on the accounting statements we see, was that sales have been very, very strong."

It's too bad, for the sake of Steve, Barry, and "Carrie," that a pesky little item called "costs" separates the top line from the bottom. Steve & Barry's tried to bail out its business by undercutting retail titan Wal-Mart (WMT Quote), selling many of its items below cost. It also offered its Stephon Marbury signature sneaker at a reduced price of $8.98, vs. a previous, exorbitant $14.98.

Steve & Barry's hope that customers would buy at least some higher-margin items once in the store, unfortunately, proved most unfounded. Now, celebrities will have to find another outlet for cheapo goods bearing their names.

Dumb-o-meter score: 93. We're hoping for some bargains at Steve & Barry's "going out of business" sale. Oh, wait. That was the business model.