Hey Joe, where you goin' with that card in your hand?

We have a nice formal dining room, but we don't eat there most nights. Usually we're at the counter in the kitchen. I couldn't tell you why. But a lot of great conversations take place there over dinner.

Last night we got into a discussion of the high-up Nike executive who resigned the other day after it was revealed that her college-age son, the notorious sneaker trader West Coast Joe, had used her credit card to buy more than a hundred thousand dollars worth of shoes – maybe way more – in his business. Joe, who I think went to Jesuit before bagging the U of O, has made a killing.

According to reports, Nike knew about the young man's business for years. But maybe they didn't know about the mom-credit-card thing until they read about it in Bloomberg. Or maybe the people who knew didn't care until now.

But there's so much more you want to know in a story like this. Is the credit card the only advantage the young man's business got from his being her son? What other advantage did her position provide to him?

There must have been something really embarrassing going on, beyond the credit card, because you don't walk away from those Nike VP jobs on a whim. They pay about half a million bucks a year, and in some cases, much more than that.

By the end of our supper, we had reached a difference of opinion about Nike ExecuMom. I didn't have too much sympathy for her, but another family member thinks she got a raw deal.

As for the son, he and his pals apparently use robots to buy up everything they're interested in, the minute it goes on sale, even when there are limits on how much one purchaser is supposed to be able to buy. Then they mark up the assembled stash, typically warehouses full of shoes, and make a quick buck.

My dinner mate says it's just capitalism. I say it's foul play. There oughta be a law against the bot thing. Yoo hoo, Elizabeth Warren!

Anyway, it's gonna make for one hell of a movie, even if we never read another juicy tidbit in the news.