is caused a domino effect of people reporting the same occurrences and was settled by Bridgestone issuing a widespread recall of the 6.5 million tires in those models. Each news article concerning the tire industry and its companies mainly introduced newfound speculations and how the industry was operating according to these speculations.
             Plans and Stock Prices of the Companies.
             The annual report of Bridgestone outlined the plans of the upcoming year. Bridgestone planned to "Lead or be led" as quoted by President Yoichiro Kaizaki who is also the COB and CEO. The plan for the year 2000 is to lead the industry in shareholder value, as well as in products and technology. But the major emphasis for the year is on reshaping the Japanese operations to cope with the falling value of the yen. Bridgestone predicted average exchange rates of 100 yen to the U.S. dollar and the same 100 yen to the euro. At those rates, they predicted net earnings to decline 4.2% despite the continuing growth in sales value. Also efforts would center on cutting the time lost to mechanical glitches on production lines by one-half not just in Japan but at all subsidiaries. The bottom line of the year 2000 was to push for "one more" –one more cost saving, one more product improvement, one more product sold.
             Ironically, Bridgestone suffered the most for the year 2000 among its competitors. This is due to the U.S. manufacturing of the three Firestone(Bridgestone is their premium name) model tires. After being investigated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, fourteen million of the tire models that were made in the factory were all deemed faulty because of mechanical glitches. These mechanical glitches were allegedly the cause of 119 deaths and thousands of accidents. Of those fourteen million, six and a half were sold to Ford and placed on their Explorer and other SUV models. Thus began the worldwide reca...