Category Archives: Business

Missing in Transit…

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Setting aside the fact that the US Postal Service has a legal monopoly on delivering first class mail in this country and they fact that they’ve had 236 years of practice moving things from Point A to Point B, sometimes I wonder why they have as many problems as they do. Then, of course, I get a handy reminder of why they suck and I used them as little as possible.

I ordered a prescription refill from my vendor of choice on the morning of August 11th and it shipped out later that afternoon. Then, somewhat inexplicably, on August 14th my order was scanned at a post office in Fort Lee, NJ and labeled “missent.” Which is fine, of course, except for the part where according to the USPS it has never been seen again. They’re quick to point out that theirs is a “delivery confirmation” system and not a “tracking” system like they use at such upscale shippers as FedEx and UPS. So it’s equally possible that the envelope containing my prescription has actually left the Garden State. It’s also possible that it’s still sitting there. There is apparently no way known to man to find out which of these options is the case. Let’s just say that the conversation with the USPS Customer Service Representative (and I use that term loosely) does not fill me with confidence. But hey, if it stays missing for five more Postal Business Days, we can officially proclaim it lost, so that’s a plus.

Don’t worry, I’m not letting CVS Caremark off the hook for their role in this little fiasco either. After all, they’re the ones who selected the USPS as the shipper of choice, which shows piss poor decision making skills right off the bat. They’re also the ones who won’t reship a prescription unless it’s been “missing in transit” for more than 15 days. They did, however, offer a very helpful suggestion of getting my doctor to give me a new prescription that I could fill at my local pharmacy… Which pretty much defeats the purpose of using your goddamned bloody mail order pharmacy program in the bleeding first place, doesn’t it you backwater asshats?

I’m a reasonable guy. I don’t expect miracles. All I know is that I can order tasty bits from Europe and have them in my hands three days later (including a Sunday) with UPS. I can order a book from Amazon and it’s sitting on my porch in 48 hours. But apparently delivering the drugs that keeps my blood pressure from rocketing into the “about to have a stroke” level in less than ten days is a bridge too far for United States Postal Service. Next time I’ll leave well enough alone and just walk to New Jersey to pick it up. It’d be faster.

Editorial Note: In the interests of fair and balanced reporting, two hours after I called USPS, the package in question was scanned in at my local post office and showed “out for delivery.” It arrived, crinkled and battered, ten days after I ordered it, but it arrived. Fortunately, the rant had progressed too far past its failsafe point to call back.

Offensive…

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I’ve been reading with something that passes for interest about the furor sparked by Adidas’ plan to sell a shoe with a built in shackle. I’m not about to sully my pristine pages here by wading into the ridiculous race debate we seem to treat as a national sport, but I couldn’t let the moment pass without throwing in a couple of cents on what I see as the bigger issue this highlights.

I almost feel bad bringing this up, but none of us, not you, not me, not your great aunt Fannie, are guaranteed to walk through life not being offended. It’s a big, cold world out there and eventually someone is going to say or do something that’s going to hurt your tender feelings or cause you to see something that you find vile, contemptuous, or downright smutty. To that, all I can say is the biggest possible “so what?”

If a company offends your sensibilities, hey feel free to stop handing them your hard earned money. If a friend, neighbor, or some random person on the street says something off color, feel free to ignore them… or better yet, say something equally offensive back at them. I hear Facebook is a particularly effective platform for bitching and moaning about what’s gone wrong with your life. Starting your own blog, of course, elevates you to the level of an almost professional crank.

Trust me, I’m the last person on earth who wants to take away anyone’s inalienable right to gripe and complain. I just wish we could all collectively grow a pair or at least take a shot at building up a little thicker skin. Personally I think we’re collectively making way too big a deal over a shoe that’s, if we’re all honest, just plain ugly as sin anyway.

Glass: The Danger in our Midst

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There is a grave danger to every man, woman, child, and distracted bird in this country now hidden in our midst. Multi-billion dollar corporations are allowed to build 15,000 square foot retail stores in areas commonly used by people for shopping. Then these companies then have the audacity to clad their storefronts with newfangled see-through glass doors and walls. These fancy glass doors represent a clear and present danger to any and all who seek to do commerce with those businesses and I say they must be stopped. How dare these companies use glass to allow passersby to see into their stores and allow their stores to be take advantage of natural ambient lighting. It’s too much! Too much, I say!

83-year olds like Evelyn Paswall and all our fellow citizens must be protected from the continued use of glass in construction around the country, because our corporations are patently “negligent … in allowing a clear, see-through glass wall and/or door to exist without proper warning.” We as a species have only been aware of glass for five millennia, clearly not a sufficient time for all of us to learn about the hazards of walking headlong into this dangerous substance as we go about our daily business in our homes and places of employment.

The courts must provide an immediate remedy for the egregious use of such a dangerous product, because clearly human beings have not been graced with the common sense that God gave the average house cat.

While this case is winding its way through the courts, I’ll be stockpiling supplies for my bunker… because civilization is obviously doomed.

Viva la Capitalism!

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I’ve really been sitting here metaphorically bashing my head against the desk trying to figure out what was worth writing about tonight. The solution, as usual, was right in front of me. Usually, I don’t pay that much attention to the internet. It’s basically transparent to the user… I mean I don’t sit down at the keyboard and say I’m going to use the internet to access WordPress or my bank. I just point in the direction of what I want to do, and it gets me there. The wonder if the internet really isn’t what got me thinking tonight, though. It’s the sites like eBay and Amazon, Etsy and Cafepress that let any schmo create an account, log in, and start selling products to a whole world of consumers that they wouldn’t have access to from the kind of businesses that people started from home five or ten years ago. Maybe I’m coming late to this party, but damnit, that’s a big deal. It’s huge! Someone with an idea that’s good enough can sit in the comfort of their on home and make money from nothing more than their ideas and a willingness to put in the time to identify and reach an audience.

Your chances of becoming an internet millionaire are probably about the same as hitting tonight’s MegaMillions jackpot, but still, in this case it seems to be a function of the harder you work, they luckier you get. The beauty of this new wave of micro-capitalism is that it takes so much of the hugh startup costs out of the equation and lets people focus on delivering a quality product while someone with the technical expertise deals with the “back office” stuff. With a few good ideas and a high speed internet connection, we can all be in business. Talk about a radical departure from all of human history.

Viva la Capitalism!

Fool me twice, shame on me…

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I guess it serves me right for believing internet rumors, but I just can’t help myself when it shows up on usually reliable sources like Boy Genius added to the slew of forums where it made the rounds. Late last night the rumor mill started circulating that BestBuy had the Blackberry Bold in stock and would begin retailing it this morning. Yeah, not so much. Once more, the AT&T/RIM/Bold succubus got everything worked into a lather only to disappoint. So now it’s back to eight more days of impatient waiting. Of course I’m so annoyed with the miserably bad roll out this device has had, I might just wait the extra week or two and try the Storm on Verizon. Then again the even bigger probability is that I’m going to end up with both of them until I can figure out which one to keep.

The Long Game…

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As you’ve noticed by now the pace of posting has slowed a bit lately. To be honest, I’ve been absolutely engrossed in watching the ongoing economic meltdown. I’ve sort of moved beyond the point of being stunned to the point of being fascinated in seeing how the market unravels from a more academic point of view. I want to try to understand the fundamentals at work – particularly those that failed. Obviously, the overextended home lending market has a significant share of the blame here, but I can’t make the jump to that being the only or even the root cause. I have to think there is something more basic at work here. So far, I’ve seen a lot of “the sky is falling” from the media, but they’ve been a little short on the serious economic analysis. Hopefully as we gain some perspective on the events of the last two weeks, someone with a far more developed sense of economics than mine will connect the dots.

While I’m thinking on the overall economy, I can’t escape the precipitous fall of stock prices over the last seven days. I’m the first to cringe when I look at the daily carnage inside my retirement account, but then I realize that I have 25 more years before I can even consider retiring and it starts to dawn on me that having the market down 50% means my IRA contribution is buying almost twice as many shares as I could a year ago for the same amount of money. Given that the historic trend of the market since its inception has been to move upwards and the ridiculously long horizon involved, the long game is looking pretty positive. Yeah, I know that thinking like that probably makes me a bad person, but I’m OK with that.

Cry Havoc…

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I’m the last person on earth I ever thought would be screaming for massive government intervention in the free market, but for god’s sake the financial sector is taking a pummeling whose only precedent was before most Americans living today were born. Not to sound like a complete alarmist, but if the Congress allows liquidity to dry up any further it’s entirely possible that the entire financial engine of the country could seize. Our economy on the macro level is based on big institutions providing short term loans to one another. If that suddenly stops happening well, then God help us. I hope you’ve stocked up on lots of canned goods.

Feel the power…

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ABC News ran a feature tonight about the “greedy” power companies who were turning off the utilities of people who were not paying their bills. Of course they trotted out the usual suspects… The family of 6, the old woman raising her grandchild, etc. All they said of the companies was that they were stopping service because delinquencies drive up the price for paying customers. Yes, Mr and Mrs Dontpaymybills and all the ships at sea, that’s how it works in this country. We trade goods and services for money or the promise of money at some predetermined point in the future. That’s what allows us to not all raise corn and cows to feed ourselves.

I know I rant on this a lot, but I just have a hard time getting past the idea that our countrymen are surprised that they’re expected to pay for the goods and services they consume. I was raised believing that this country was about the right to pursue happiness… Not necessarily the right to have it. In economics, there’s a principle that everyone learns in their 101 class that says “there’s no such thing as a free lunch.” The consequences of basing an economic system on the premise that everyone should have a free lunch if they want one died off with the Soviet Union. Cuba stays afloat because of the tourist dollars generated from capitalist Europe. China’s Communist party stays in power because they have adopted measured amounts of capitalism and that trend is increasing over time.

But, you say the top 1% of earners are running away with the pie. It’s true that their part of the pie has grown, but the entire pie has gotten larger too. There are more millionaires per capita today than at any time in the history of the Republic. That doesn’t mean that these individuals have jobs making $700,000 a year, just that they were smart with what they did with their money. Get out of school making $35k a year, max out your contribution to your IRA and 401k, live under your means, and in 35 years when you’re eligible to retire, guess what… You’re a millionaire too. Work another 5 or 6 years past eligibility, guess what… That’s right, another million. Compound interest and long-term market growth are beautiful things, friends.

So next time you’re watching the nightly news and tempted to sign onto the bandwagon that all our problems are caused by the big, bad corporations, take a look around at the decisions individuals have made that contribute to where they find themselves. The Invisible hand doesn’t just guide the market up, it guides it down too. Get in tune with that and you’ll really feel the power.

The “R” Word…

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I’ve been watching this on the news for the last several weeks and think we need to clarify the fact that there is a definition to what a recession is and is not. By definition, a recession is 2 consecutive quarters of negative growth in gross domestic product (GDP). This week’s report shows growth for the first quarter at .6%. That’s GROWTH (i.e. GDP increased). If you’re a talking head and go on television talking about the current recession when the last two quarters show economic growth, you look like an idiot. Suck it up and face that fact that the American economy is simply robust enough to endure the “shock” of high oil prices, the collapse of the housing bubble, and increasing prices on commodity and manufactured goods while continuing to grow. Stop looking like an idiot. That is all.

Communist News Network…

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Last week I was watching CNN, which is not something I usually do, but the hospital is too cheap to get a decent cable package apparently, although they do charge $10/day for using the TV. Lou Dobbs, who once upon a time was their financial guru, has been running a series of “special reports” under the headline “War on the Middle Class.” Now aside from the obvious political slant of the headline (Fox isn’t the only news channel with an agenda, people), the issue that I have with this particular episode was that it was decrying the lack of a federal response to the “home loan crisis” and calling for a government bailout of people about to go into foreclosure.

As someone who did my homework, read every page of my loan origination documents, asked questions, and bought a house that I could actually afford to make payments on, I am absolutely livid at the suggestion that the US government should subsidize people who either through stupidity or negligence saddled themselves with a mortgage that they could not afford. I used logic and financial analysis to make my decisions on how, when, and where to buy, so I am having a hard time digesting the idea that because I made good decisions, money should come out of my pocket to pick up the tab for those who made bad ones.

This isn’t a war on the middle class in America. This isn’t even the government offering aid to people who found themselves in harm’s way during a natural disaster or terrorist event. This is about people being kicked in the teeth by the free market because they chose poorly. It’s not my responsibility or yours to compensate them for their own bad decisions. Government interference in the market always has unintended consequences and the inevitable bailout of these people sets a dangerous and damning precedent.