Whereas O’Donnell laudably attempted to target the audience’s consideration onand hopefully last, Charlie Sheen trainwreck interview, courtesy of the tragic undertow that threatens to pull Sheen underneath for wonderful, I used to be overtaken, not through the pulling on the thread, along with the voracious audience he serves. It didn’t make me depressing, it crafted me angry.
Concerning celebrities, we will be a heartless nation, basking within their misfortunes like nude sunbathers at Schadenfreude Beach. The impulse is understandable, to some degree. It could be grating to listen to complaints from men and women who take pleasure in privileges that the majority of us cannot even picture. In case you cannot muster up some compassion for Charlie Sheen, who tends to make extra income to get a day’s function than the majority of us will make in a decade’s time, I guess I can not blame you.
With all the fast pace of events on the internet and also the information and facts revolution sparked from the Web, it’s incredibly simple for your solutions trade to assume it is unique: consistently breaking new ground and accomplishing stuff that nobody has ever achieved previously.
But you can get other kinds of business that have currently undergone many of the same exact radical shifts, and also have just as excellent a stake within the long run.
Take healthcare, for example.
We frequently feel of it as a large, lumbering beast, but in fact, medicine has undergone a series of revolutions inside the past 200 years which have been a minimum of equal to those we see in technological innovation and specifics.
Much less understandable, but still within the norms of human nature, could be the impulse to rubberneck, to slow down and look into the carnage of Charlie spectacle of Sheen’s unraveling, but on the blithe interviewer Sheen’s lifestyle as we pass it while in the most suitable lane of our daily lives. To become honest, it could possibly be tough for people today to discern the distinction in between a run-of-the-mill attention whore, and an honest-to-goodness, circling the drain tragedy-to-be. On its own merits, a quote like “I Am On the Drug. It’s Named Charlie Sheen” is sheer genius, and we can not all be expected to consider the full measure of someone’s existence every single time we hear one thing humorous.
Swift forward to 2011 and I'm trying to examine would mean of currently being a bit more business-like about my hobbies (mainly audio). By the end of January I had manned up and started to promote my blogs. I had generated various totally different blogs, which had been contributed to by colleagues and colleagues. I promoted these actions by Facebook and Twitter.
2nd: the little abomination that the Gang of 5 on the Supream Court gave us a 12 months or so ago (Citizens Inebriated) definitely comprises a tad bouncing betty of its personal that could quite nicely go off within the faces of Govs Wanker, Sacitch, Krysty, and J.O. Daniels. Due to the fact this ruling extended the notion of “personhood” to equally corporations and unions, to experiment with to deny them any right to run in the legal framework that they have been organized under deprives these “persons” of your freedoms of speech, association and movement. Which means (after once again, quoting law school educated household) that either the courts have to uphold these rights for that unions (as individual “persons” as guaranteed from the Federal (and most state) constitutions, or they have to declare that these attempts at stripping or limiting union rights really have to utilize to big corporations, also.
It's been more than three years since we received any confessions from an employee at Staples. Thankfully, Staples vet Dave decided to write us with the insights he gleaned from his time at the office supply superstore.
1) The managers have a ton of power, the front line employees have very little. If you want to negotiate, get an exception, have a question, or were told one thing and are now being told something else, just ask for a manager. Managers can make pretty much anything happen and are extremely sensitive to customer complaints.
2) Tech work is the lowest priority. Everything else comes first even if it's something as time insensitive as putting out stock. The reason is that everything else is evaluated in some kind of metric, tech work being finished in a timely manner is not (or at least it's never enough of a priority to let front line employees know). This may not seem like a big deal, you wait a few extra hours maybe a day or two, but it exponentially increases the likelihood of error because the tech doing the work is constantly being pulled away from the task at hand, making it far easier to forget what needs to be done, what had been done, and other details of the work at hand.
3) Price matching is pretty much an absolute sure thing so long as it's from a bricks and mortar store. Just bring in some evidence in the form of a flyer, photo, or even have them call to confirm. This is especially useful when combined with...
4) Online coupons are all over the place. Google around on a weekly basis and many times you'll be able to find coupons for 15% off an entire order, sometimes they'll go as high as 25% off. They're not tied to a specific person, or account, and they'll be good over and over again until they expire. If you're shopping for a specific item wait till a brick and mortar competitor puts it on sale, price match it and use the coupon.
5) Staples makes almost nothing, and sometimes loses money, on PCs, especially laptops. As a result, Staples focuses very strongly on selling you a bunch of crap with the PCs. Crap they make a lot more money on. This is why if you try to dash in, buy a laptop and dash out you won't be dashing anywhere. Staples has set up a system to eat up at least 20 minutes of your time, in an attempt to sell you extended service plans, tech services, accessories, and anything else. Most of the metrics Staples uses and pays attention to are focused in this area (the biggest of these is called Market Basket and is essentially the cost of everything bought except the PC that is sold in each transaction with a PC). If a sales associate is letting laptops fly out the door without attaching any other sales to it he won't be there long. As a result it can be difficult to buy just a PC. You'll be hammered with how you need to buy extended warranties for a good bit of it, you'll be asked for lots of information so they can record it for their records (this is mostly an attempt to slow you down so you can't make a quick purchase), you'll be told any number of things to drive up the market basket number. A sales associate would far rather you not buy at all than buy just a laptop, so expect roadblocks to be thrown up if you make your intentions obvious. One associate in a nearby store was notorious for telling customers they were out of stock and would send them to another store to avoid an accessory-free sale.
6) The Up Front Agreement is Staples' attempt to get low-paid, high turnover employees to sell more. There's nothing really to know here except that Staples explicitly touts this as a way to make the customer feel as if they are in charge when really the sales associate is in charge. Not a shock that's what they intend, but a bit more honest than I expected.
7) You get to be an Expert or manager by selling, not by being competent. So if you're dealing with an EasyTech Expert they may know what they're talking about when it comes to fixing your PC, but they definitely know how to sell.
8) Sales end on Saturday night and new ones begin on Sunday. If you find an old tag that's expired they will still honor it so long as you point it out. I once saw an expired tag honored that was out of date by over a year.
9) The Copy and Print Center is by far their most profitable area. As a result they will make it right if you complain, they will re-do the order to correct issues even to the point of if they screw it up enough times giving you your corrected order and your money back. About the only thing they won't do is actual design work, so you'll need to bring in your order already ready to go. If you do need design work done they can send it out to be done, it's a little expensive but I never saw a complaint. Also, you will be upsold here to nicer paper, its not much more and does make a big difference if it's a project you want to impress with. I wouldn't have believed that before I worked in the CPC, but it does.
Thanks to Dave for sending this in. If you have some insider info about the store you work at (or used to work at), send us your confessions at tips@consumerist.com with "confessions" in the subject.
Submitted by Davis Sherman Okst of Financial Sense
Prove Mayans Right: Address Structural Economic Problems With Chicanery (Part 2 of 2)
Monetizing Governmental Debt AKA Money Printing or in Bernanke’s Vernacular - Quantitative Easing
Here are some realities on Quantitive Easing:
- If
Bernanke stopped QE, the United States of America would default, the
government would close down, there would be massive interruptions in all
Federally assisted programs (Medicare, Social Security, etc.), debt
service to China et al would be impacted or stop totally - We
take in about 2 trillion in tax revenue, we borrow about 1 trillion and,
like drunken sailors, we spend about 4.5 trillion. 80% of our deficit
is entitlements and debt service. Make all the cuts we want, that stuff
can't be cut. QE is a fancy term for counterfeiting the 1.5 trillion
dollar difference we have NO possible way of paying - QE is debt
monetization that IS increasing the size of the money supply. Since that
money has been spent, there is no way in hell Bernanke or anyone else
can “shrink” the money supply at the right time - the horses are out of
the barn, every POMO auction is just money created out of thin air to
cover the Treasury's checking account
There are those who
would point out that without “velocity” we can’t have hyperinflation;
and with 23% employment we aren’t going to get people spending,
therefore there will be no velocity and thus no hyperinflation. I’d
advocate that this argument be looked at again. First, the government
is spending “funny money” that is, to some extent, creating some
“velocity.” What is more important - money is a
commodity as described in Part 1 - and therefore the more of a commodity
that there is the less its value. Since the inception of the Fed in
1913 the dollar went to a value of .04 cents, 80% of that devaluation
happened since Nixon took us off the gold standard. So if our dollar
goes to a value of less than .04 cents, lets say .00000001 cent - we
will have massive hyperinflation. Printing money is the road to
.00000001 cents.
I’m in the camp that gold hasn’t gone up, silver
hasn’t gone up and the stock market hasn’t gone up. Graham Summers of
Capital Research did a fantastic short piece titled “While I Love Gold” at ZeroHedge.
Stocks Priced to Gold
Like
I said, gold hasn’t “gone up” stocks haven’t “gone up” and food prices
haven’t “gone up.” The value of all currencies have gone down. People
who compare one currency to another won't see what is happening until it
is too late.
It is all how you look at it. We are playing an
entirely idiotic game because no president (other than Andrew Jackson)
had the guts to fix the real problem - money.
About the only
thing gold and silver will do is act as a true store of value and pay
off any fixed debt when things get totally out of hand - which, in my
never so humble opinion - is the obvious unstoppable trajectory we are
on now.
Lastly, on the subject of Ben Bernanke’s path to making the USA Zimbabwe I’d like to address the “We can raise interest rates
in 15 minutes” BS. Sure he can. But the rest of the “We can raise
interest rates in 15 minutes” sentence goes like this: of course 80% of
the deficit is unfunded liabilities and debt that is rolling over, so
doing so will bankrupt the country with impossible to pay interest on
debt. Estimates are that higher interest rates
will add TRILLIONS to our debt. Higher rates will be another nail in
real estates coffin, another nail in high unemployments coffin and
another nail in state and local debt burdens.
In summary: The
biggest lies about Quantitative Easing are: It isn’t [governmental] debt
monetization, we can raise interest rates, it isn’t causing inflation,
it won't cause hyperinflation, we aren’t increasing the size of the
money supply, we can contract the size of the money supply when the time
is perfect, we can stop it [QE] at anytime, it is creating jobs, and we
can sell stuff no one else is now buying and the money is just sitting
there, i.e. there is no velocity.
In short: It is QE or America
defaults. A.) Hyperinflate the absurd debt away or B.) Default. If
Bernanke thinks he can secretly devalue the dollar and reduce our debt
to some payable amount by reducing the dollar’s value by like 10% per
year (thus reducing our 128 trillion dollar debt to half over 5 years)
then he is really an utter and absolute moron.
The Maestro of
Disaster came right out and said that debasing a currency is American
robbery. Covertly stealing - even if it is for some lame unworkable
plan to save the economy - is not leadership, nor is it ethical.
Lies are the hallmark of a leadership deficit. Lies don’t fix problems, solutions do.
The Fix
The
fix is simple: Admit that things got out of hand over the past 4
decades and overtly do what they are covertly doing. Stop prolonging the
agony - it is abolishing the middle class. The only trick is to make
the monetary system as sound as possible. I have no false dreams that
we will ever wind up with a better system (read: something that isn’t
debt-money IS debt) but I do know we can do better.
We supposedly have 10,000 tones of gold.
According
to Greenspan’s own 1960 article this country has been and is a welfare
state that is robbing its citizens through taxation and inflation:
Source: http://removeripoffreports.net/ corporate Reputation Management
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