Kitchen Sink

Q. Jim Cramer of CNBC spoke of a certain company’s habit of “kitchen sinking” their financial reports. Do you know what that means?

A. To kitchen sink is to announce all of a company's bad financial news at one time. A company deliberately overloads a report or press conference to overwhelm the reader/listener. It’s a playful reversal of “everything but the kitchen sink.”

• “In the banking sector, UBS rallied from opening lows to add 2.62 pct as investors cheered the group's attempt to kitchen sink its subprime exposure.” [Thompson Financial News]
• “There is a general feeling on both Wall Street and Main Street that the financials attempted to bottle up all of their losses in one bad quarter. They tried to ‘kitchen sink’ the bit.” [Jutia Group: Market Jitters & Political Critters]
• “There's a whole chapter in the Hite book on unfair tactics men use in fights ... withdrawal, ridicule, teasing, emotional violence. But there's no mention of the classic female tactics ... like "kitchen-sinking", where she drags in ammunition from every battle they have ever fought, dredging her elephantine memory for past hurts, never-forgotten sins he once committed. [Bettina Arndt, "Are men really so terrible?" Sun Herald, November 8, 1987]

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