Money

      When you are considering a new job possibility, it is important to find out all you can about their pension plan. Of course if the company doesn’t offer  a pension plan, you are all on your own, As many people found out recently, poor planning can wipe out your plan altogether.

     Money isn’t money any more just a bunch of 1s and 0s drifting in and out of computers that keep track of where it came from, where it’s going and whose account gets credited. When you go to your ATM machine and make a withdrawal from your account, the teller is not involved in your transaction because at the bank no paper money changes hands. A computer simply adjusts the code that says how much is left in your account.

     You probably already know this, but it is an example of how fast adjustments to accounts can happen. In order to maximize their income, banks have kept up to date on their hardware and software to the point the second you touch the button to close the transaction your account has been adjusted.

     Sonny asks - what did we do before there were banks? My answer is, life was a lot simpler in the good old days.

     It’s like a trip I took to Prague, Czechoslovakia a few years ago. Before they would let me into their country, I had to spend at least 200 U.S. Dollars in exchange for Chech Korunas at the official exchange rate, which was 7 or 8 to one at that time. A taxi hailed me as soon as I stepped out on the curb in front of the airport, drove up eagerly, and asked if I had U. S. Dollars before he opened the passenger door. During that short cab ride, I got a lesson in how bad government interference with free markets can be.

    I’ll call him “Joe,” since I can’t remember his name, bargained for some of my dollars starting at 17 to 1 and ending up at 30 to 1. On the open market, the U. S. Dollar is highly regarded, People living in countries that don’t have banks that can be trusted, hoard $100 bills in a tin can, in some cases, representing their life savings. However, the old economic canon about supply and demand can be perverted when the politicians in control of the treasury decide to print more money in support of some “worthy” cause. At any rate, it is normal for the  money supply to expand and contract along with normal fluctuations in demand.

    Sonny is telling his friends that the securities exchanges have been overestimating the future value of corporate stocks for some time now making virtual billionaires out of employees holding stock options with unrealistic market prices. He says the recent market’s free fall was merely an adjustment to reality and throwing billions or trillions at the problem will not in the end cure the malaise.

Sonny says, “Free markets are always damaged by government fiddling.”

Words to live by:      Never marry for money. You can borrow it cheaper.

Economic Indicators

Analysts are busy pouring over the recently released US Census data. Optimists will look at the data and say, we must have hit bottom, while pessimists will extrapolate the data and say there is no bottom, and realists will say what can we learn from this data. Alarmists see, median household income fell 3%, income gap between rich and poor got wider, and the poverty level is highest in 51 years.

Pundits are comparing today’s economic downturn with the Great Depression, predicting this recession is so deep; its impact may alter the first several decades of this century, the recession, according to experts, that began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009

If you had been working for General motors, taking home a union negotiated $75 dollars an hour (plus insurance benefits and pension) and read in one of the business magazines that Toyota paid only $45 dollars an hour for similar work, what were you thinking? At the same time, profitable Toyota’s U.S. sales caught up with America’s unprofitable number one carmaker. Would you, everything else being equal, under these circumstances quit GM and go to work for Toyota?

I told Sonny that I did that once in my life. He chuckled and said, “You’re not that crazy, or are you?” It was worse than that Sonny boy, I didn’t even have a job. I quit because I was in a dead end job with a big company that was missing the best opportunity of that era. It was the right thing to do, as it turned out.

Your next job should be a targeted job. No Sonny, not a job at Target. Spend some time looking into the future to list some businesses that have a future and then look for companies that are doing well in their market.

There is an abundance of online Resources, for instance, the Wall Street Journal’s auto sales data.
http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2_3022-autosales.html


To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.

Thomas Jefferson

Everyone said, if you’ve money to invest,

Give it all to Bernie, he’s the best.

He can make us all Wealthy,

Keep our portfolios Healthy,

That is until he was put under Arrest.

Your Next Job

In Washington on Wednesday, September 8, 2010, in a speech given by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, she said, "mounting U.S. debt threatens the United States' ability to chart its own course in the world." In the last presidential election, voters, having fallen on hard times, elected an anti-business president who together with a self-indulgent congress is about to bankrupt the country. If you are amongst the 19 million job seekers in America, we have some tips you will not get anywhere else.


In the post 2008 crunch period, everything is going to change, and not all for the better, Competition will greatly increase. What we used to call “Third World” countries, China, India, for example are catching up with the western world. Obama’s world, ideally, would ensure a college degree to every high school graduate. President Obama’s desire to increase government interference in how business is taxed and regulated will shift economic growth from the US to venues that are more accommodating.

We don’t have to look back too many years to see how the advent of the personal computer has changed all of our lives. Sonny and I don’t read the newspaper much anymore, the internet, or TV is easier and more relevant. You can now read popular books without wasting paper.

Sonny says, the job you had may never come back and if you are collecting unemployment, now is an excellent time to dust off your crystal ball to see what is in your future.

Start with some self-evaluation. Ask yourself:
Is the company you worked for still in business?
Does somebody have your old job?
Are you approaching or over fifty?

If the answer to any of these questions is “yes,” you may have fallen victim to the Peter Principle, which states: "In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence." An example would be when the top salesman is rewarded by naming him Sales Manager. In this case, the company lost some sales and acquirers an unskilled manager.

Take the Triple A test to score your job potentiality:
ATTITUDE: a state of mind.
APTITUDE: inherent ability;
AMBITION: a strong desire to achieve.

Rank yourself high for a particular job in the triple A, and you probably have a job.

Subscribe to Sonny’s Beagle Bugle for this continuing series, it is free, and he intends to show what you need to write resumes that get attention, the real value of intern programs, and a whole lot more. In return, he asks for your comments.
 

Ms Nancy our congressional elective,

Has a memory quite defective.

The right says she lies,

And the left says she tries

With her lies to be more effective.


Words to live by:


Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
Groucho Marx

Bureaucracy is a circle from which no one can escape.
Karl Marx