To those of you who don’t understand what the Federal Reserve Bank is doing to, er, for the economy, this HILARIOUS video is for you. It features two little fluffy characters who speak of the ‘Bernanc’ and explain why the Fed is printing $600BN dollars.
Why? ‘The Goldman Sachs’
Yesterday there were about a hundred Tea Party protesters at the corner of Grand and Payton in Chino Hills, blowing whistles and waving flags to signify their disgust with the temporary injunction the judge in the Arizona SB 1070 case issued. They are angry because they believe that Arizona is being denied their right to defend themselves from the onslaught of illegal aliens and drug smugglers from Mexico. Most of them (I’ve spoken with quite a few), see this as a state’s rights issue and think Arizona should be able to use the means in SB 1070 to make a difference in the illegal immigration problem.
The opposite point of view has unfortunately focused on racism and the belief that racial profiling will be used. To be fair, most white people don’t understand what it’s like to be pulled over, and sometimes searched, because you look different. The average white person has never had that experience. The average black or hispanic person has. Repeatedly. But while that fear is justified, it’s not the real reason to oppose SB1070.
When the Soviet Union was in power, you needed transit papers to travel from one city to another. If you didn’t have what was essentially a visa, you couldn’t leave your town and go to another province or city. If you did and you were caught, you could do jail time. Nazi Germany employed this same system as a way to be able to detain people without cause.
The powers of SB1070, used for the purposes stated, are fine. It’s the infrastructure it creates that is the real problem. Think of all the abuses under the PATRIOT Act. Wiretaps and e-mail impounding that could have never taken place before it was signed into law. Extrajudicial rendition, the practice of scooping people off of streets in foriegn countries. Torture. These are all things our government is doing now. The problem with SB1070 is it could be used to gut Miranda and probable cause requirements. It is also a short step to requiring transit papers.
And before you say, ‘The law has safeguards to prevent abuses’, I will tell you that the PATRIOT Act actually has a lot of checks in it to. They’re just not used when they aren’t convenient.
Continue reading “SB 1070 Judge is Right – But Not For The Reason You Might Think | Peter Mehit”
Continuing our discussion of Generation X as our target consumer, we have gathered a variety of facts about our subjects and now need to use those facts to answer the following questions.
Let’s answer the questions using the information we’ve learned about Generation X.
Continue reading “Gen X as a Target Customer – Part Two | Lydia Mehit”
The title is lifted from a Peter Gabriel song. I can’t remember the lyrics except that line, but it always stuck with me. I was reminded of it today when reading a comment on a blog post:
My opinion is the media wether it is newspaper article, online article or broadcasted news (not all MOST) are just agents of chaos.
–msgoddessoftruth
It hit me. The if-it-bleeds-it-leads, humiliation and degradation obsessed media are agents of chaos. Some say up to 14 trillion dollars have been vacuumed out of the economy by financial engineering. Does that get crisis coverage? No, Lindsey Lohan gets more air time than the senate hearings to uncover the crime.
Car chases. Snooki. Gay marriage. The terrorist next door. Whatever will agitate us while toothless regulations are passed to allow just a little bit less rape. It’s the same reason all plots have a diversion element. It makes people turn their eyes away from the actual crime. It happens in front of you and you don’t see it. Chaos makes money.
There is no conspiracy; It’s human nature. The wealthy don’t need to be told to watch each other’s back.
The problem with this machine is it’s whipping up more anger and division. People are stacking sandbags instead of reaching out. Fear is high. If it gets too high, it will cause violence.
Tell the truth. Build your community. Help your neighbor.
Many business owners think that EVERYONE is their customer, so they create a coupon, find a monthly delivery system (a coupon magazine or coupon mailer) and hope for the best. But understanding your target customer can give you insights into how to price, how to promote, how to utilize media and what special offers will appeal to them.
Is Generation X the most likely group of people to purchase your goods and services?
How would you know? Start with your current customers. What is the average age of the majority of your customers? Who typically makes the largest purchase during an average visit. Who are return customers?
If you are not in business yet, look at the neighborhoods where you are thinking of locating your business. What is the average age and income of the people in the immediate one mile radius. Check out the three mile radius also. If you have a retail business, the majority of your customers will be local to those areas.
If your answer is Generation X, have you made them the target of your marketing dollars? Do you know how to make your message resonate with them?
Continue reading “Who Is Generation X? | Lydia Mehit”
On a recent Tuesday, it was not a good day to be a millennial. They learned that, unlike any previous generation, they are entering their work life with an average of $22,000 of student loan debt. They were told by the HR chief of Intel that their liberal arts degrees (far and away the majority for them) are not valuable enough to stop the outsourcing of jobs offshore. One of their own, a 23 year old running a South Bay non-profit, described her struggles with debt and the bewildering number of jobs she’s held in the brief interval since graduation. All of this coming before Reid Hoffman, one of the founders of Linked In, declared that ‘…careers are dead’ and that they should expect to be employed as freelancers their entire working lives.
At a conference hosted by the Atlantic monthly, the National Journal and Allstate Insurance entitled “Millennials in the Next Economy” at UCLA, we learned some interesting facts about this generation who are 92 million strong. They are the most diverse generation ever: 40% are minorities. 28% are college graduates, making them the best educated (in terms of degrees, at least) of any previous generation, with 42% currently in school. 26% are seeking employment. Politicians should note that 72% are registered to vote and 39% believe the country is headed in the wrong direction.
But the one statistic that I found most interesting is, despite the economic collapse and the situation they find themselves in, 60% believe that they are in control of their own destinies, that their decisions will primarily decide the outcome of their lives.
Continue reading “Linked In’s Reid Hoffman to Millennials – Welcome to the New Feudalism | Peter Mehit”
I love watching people who enjoy publicly subsidized medical care and prescription drug benefits stand on street corners with signs warning of a socialist takeover of health care.
Given how long it took the Tea Partiers to realize their first name choice, ‘Tea Baggers’, actually described a sexual practice, there is probably little hope they will grasp how ironic they are. These individuals are the number one enemies of health care reform. The baby boomers. They’re retired (or about to be), they’ve got steady income and a great health plan. They’ve got theirs and you’re not going to mess with it.
Continue reading “My Generation | Peter Mehit”
Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase declared that a financial crisis is something that “happens every five to seven years. We shouldn’t be surprised.” In short, stuff happens, and that’s just part of life.
But the truth is that the United States managed to avoid major financial crises for half a century after the Pecora hearings were held and Congress enacted major banking reforms. It was only after we forgot those lessons, and dismantled effective regulation, that our financial system went back to being dangerously unstable.
It’s the equivalent of “Hey, who can know why these things happen? What am I, an expert? Fuggetaboutit.”
The Federal Reserve Bank, to preserve its own power, is engaged in a lawsuit to prevent disclosure over what banks received bailout funds, along with how much they received.
Since the Fed controls currency, in effect, your government is engaged in a fight to NOT tell you who the gave YOUR money to.
The Fed is joined in its bid to overturn Preska’s order by the Clearing House Association LLC, an industry-owned group in New York that processes payments between banks. The group assailed the judge’s decision for what it said were legal errors, such as applying the wrong standard in weighing the exception to FOIA.
The group includes ABN Amro Bank NV, a unit of Royal Bank of Scotland Plc, Bank of America Corp., The Bank of New York Mellon Corp., Citigroup Inc., Deutsche Bank AG, HSBC Holdings Plc, JPMorgan Chase & Co., US Bancorp and Wells Fargo & Co.
Federal Reserve Seeks to Protect U.S. Bailout Secrets (Update1) – Bloomberg.com.
Continue reading “Federal Reserve Seeks to Protect U.S. Bailout Secrets (Update1) | Bloomberg.com”
Facebook has begun testing a system that’s in vogue at the moment: Using its own users as a data-crunching system. Nothing terribly new there–except that Facebook’s using its crowd to actually moderate the rest of the crowd and stamp out the nasty bits, which is a whole new ethically-intriguing level
It’s called the “Facebook Community Council” and according to the group’s motto it exists to “harness the power and intelligence of Facebook users to support us in keeping Facebook a trusted and vibrant community.” This all sounds very lofty, very un-dictatorial and much more hippyish, power-to-the-people than Facebook sometimes seems, with moves like its blanket decisions on user-privacy.
Dispatches From The Front 