Archive for June, 2010

Newer Entries »

Hey you – vacationer – show me your papers !

June 8, 2010

Here’s a twist of irony on the Arizona illegal immigration dust-up …

My son and daughter-in-law recently took advantage of some bargain travel rates and vacationed in Mexico.

When their flight arrived back in DC, they had to:

1) Fill out a form stating their citizenship and declaring whether they were carrying stashes of livestock, yucca plants or pesos.

2) Present their passports to customs agents

3) Answer a couple of clarifying questions (e.g. purpose of trip) after their passports’ bar codes were scanned to pull up their profiles from the Fed data base.

Hmmm.

Two lifelong American citizens flying back from a Mexican vacation into a city that’s several hundred miles away from the Mexican border … a city that’s not reputed to be high on the illegal immigration standings.  They have to jump thru hoops to re-enter the country.

But if – instead of a direct flight from Cancun to DC – they had come by truck across the Rio Grande, there would have been public outrage if they were asked to show an ID.

Is it just me, or is that nuts ?

Posted in Immigration | Leave a Comment »

Why are employers on strike ?

June 7, 2010

Last week, the Feds reported that 441,000 jobs were added to the economy.  That’s good news.

If fact, it’s “the best news” President Obama has heard in awhile.

How do we know ?  Because he said so.

But, 411,000 of the 441,000 were temporary census workers – hired to chase down folks who didn’t return their paper survey forms. That’s bad news.

It means that private employers added less than 1,000 jobs per state.

The WSJ coined the situation “Employers on Strike” (see article hi-lites below)

As usual, the Homa Files were a couple of months ahead of the biz press.

In early February we called it passive aggressive behavior:

Real business guys tell me that they are, in fact, holding off hiring until “things settle down” in the economy.

Further, they fear draconian reprisals from Team O if they show any resistance to the anti-business initiatives or rhetoric.

They might be the next industry to be tax-jacked, punitively regulated, or publicly scorned as eco-dangerous, socially-negligent, wealth hoarding profiteers.

So how can businesses fight back against Team O?

Easy.  Just ‘recast’ each potential new hire as a vote for Obama’s policies … and refuse to pull the lever.

It’s called passive aggressive behavior.

Why unemployment will stay high … at least until after the 2010 elections.
https://kenhoma.wordpress.com/2010/02/01/why-unemployment-will-stay-high-at-least-until-after-the-2010-elections/

Now, we can make two sure-shot predictions:

(1) Businesses — large and small – will contain hiring until after the Nov. elections when the legislative “spill” is contained.

(2) The Census will run into unexpected procedural issues (i.e. “systemic failures”) that will require even more Census workers kept on the gov’t payroll even longer.

* * * * *
Excerpted from WSJ: Employers on Strike, June 5, 2010

Congress keeps giving business reasons not to hire. Almost everything Congress has done in recent months has made private businesses less inclined to hire new workers.

  • ObamaCare imposes new taxes and mandates on private employers.
  • Congress raised the minimum wage to $7.25, pricing more workers out of jobs.
    Note: The teen unemployment rate rose to 26.4% in May, and for those between the ages of 25 and 34 it rose to 10.5%. These should be some of the first to be hired in an expansion because they are relatively cheap and have the potential for large productivity gains as they add skills.
  • The “jobs” bill that the House passed last week expands jobless insurance to 99 weeks.
    Note: Empirical evidence suggests that lengthening unemployment insurance prolongs unemployment
  • The “jobs” bill raised taxes by $80 billion on small employers and U.S-based corporations.
  • On January 1, Congress is set to let taxes rise on capital gains, dividends and small businesses.

None of the above are incentives to hire more Americans.

If the administration wants this to be more than a jobless recovery, it should drop its government-creates-wealth illusions and start asking why so many private employers remain on strike.

Full article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704764404575286831965692578.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_h

Posted in Employment - Jobs | Leave a Comment »

"What are your weaknesses ?"

June 7, 2010

Predictably, the NY Times praised President Obama’s press conference last week.

After all, he fessed up to a mistake and admitted that he was wrong — something Bush would never do. 

What did he do wrong?

“I was too trusting of the information that we were getting from BP.”

That reminds me of a typical job interview question “What are your weaknesses ?”

Classic answer: “Sometimes I get impatient with people who don’t share my high quality standards”.

Isn’t it a breath of fresh air when people can step-up and be self-critical.

* * * * *

P.S. Don’t give the above answer in a job interview or your candidacy will be squashed before your very eyes.

Posted in Careers & Interviewing, Leadership | Leave a Comment »

Muhammad Ali or Floyd Patterson ?

June 4, 2010

This caught my eye because I frequently use the characterization in references that somebody can (or can not) take a punch.

For me, it’s shorthand for how a person deals with unexpected adversity and criticism.

It’s a gauge of character …

* * * * *

David Axelrod was reportedly concerned about candidate Obama’s “willingness and ability to put up with something never before experienced on a sustained basis: criticism. I don’t know if you are Muhammad Ali or Floyd Patterson when it comes to taking a punch.”
 http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/05/27/obama-the-thin-skinned-president/

  • Note to non-sporters and young folks, Ali could – Patterson couldn’t

Last week, there were none too flattering characterizations of Obama floating around: thin-skinned, defensive, whiney, blame shifting … and one TV pundit quipped “America wants a president, not a princess”.

Paraphrasing MLK: A person’s true character is revealed in not times of prosperity, but in times of adversity

* * * * *


Posted in Leadership, Obama Administration | Leave a Comment »

Stand up if you want to be leaner & live longer … no kidding.

June 4, 2010

Public enemy No. 1 in today’s workplace: the office chair .

Americans sit an average of almost 9 hours per day … but. the spine wasn’t meant to stay for long periods in a seated position … especially in a typical office chair.

* * * * *

Quick Takes from Bloomberg Business Week: Your Office Chair Is Killing You, April 29, 2010

“Short of sitting on a spike, you can’t do much worse than a standard office chair.” 

New research in the diverse fields of epidemiology, molecular biology, biomechanics, and physiology is converging toward a startling conclusion: Sitting is a public-health risk.

“People with obesity have a natural predisposition to be attracted to their chair.”

Lean people, on average, stand for two hours longer than their counterparts.

“If you’re standing around and puttering, you recruit specialized muscles designed for postural support that never tire … they’re unique in that the nervous system recruits them for low-intensity activity and they’re very rich in enzymes.”

  • One enzyme, lipoprotein lipase, grabs fat and cholesterol from the blood, burning the fat into energy while shifting the cholesterol from LDL (the bad kind) to HDL (the healthy kind).
  • When you sit, the muscles are relaxed, and enzyme activity drops by 90% to 95%, leaving fat to camp out in the bloodstream. Within a couple hours of sitting, healthy cholesterol plummets by 20%.

Older people who move around have half the mortality rate of their peers.

Frequent TV and Web surfers (sitters) have higher rates of hypertension, obesity, high blood triglycerides, low HDL cholesterol, and high blood sugar, regardless of weight.:

Full article:
http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/10_19/b4177071221162.htm

Posted in Health & Nutrition | Leave a Comment »

This has been the toughest year and a half since the 1930s … oh really ?

June 3, 2010

Every promoted business manager faces challenges that were rolled to him by his predecessor.

From my consulting days, I know that all companies think that they’re competing in the most challenging industries, at the most challenging times, against the most formidable foes ever.

Effective managers read the cards they were dealt and craft the strategies and tactics required to remediate the issues and leverage the jewels.

Ineffective managers just whine about the weak hands they were given, remorse over unkindly “shocks”, and focus on ducking blame.  In business they don’t last very long.

* * * * *

Excerpted from Politics Daily: Obama, the Thin-Skinned President
http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/05/27/obama-the-thin-skinned-president/

In a fundraising event for Sen. Barbara Boxer, President Obama repeated his constant refrain:

“Let’s face it: this has been the toughest year and a half since any year and a half since the 1930s.”

Really, now?

  • Worse than the period surrounding December 7, 1941 and September 11, 2001?
  • Worse than what Gerald Ford faced after the resignation of Richard Nixon and Watergate, which constituted the worse constitutional scandal in our history and tore the country apart?
  • Worse than what Ronald Reagan faced after Jimmy Carter (when interest rates were 22 percent, inflation was more than 13 percent, and Reagan faced something entirely new under the sun, “stagflation”)?
  • Worse than 1968, when Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. were assassinated and there was rioting in our streets?
  • Worse than what LBJ faced during Vietnam — a war which eventually claimed more than 58,000 lives?
  • Worse than what John Kennedy faced in the Bay of Pigs and in the Cuban Missile Crisis, when we and the Soviet Union edged up to the brink of nuclear war?
  • Worse than what Franklin Roosevelt faced on the eve of the Normandy invasion?
  • Worse than what Bush faced in Iraq in 2006, when that nation was on the edge of civil war, or when the financial system collapsed in the last months of his presidency?
  • Worse than what Truman faced in defeating imperial Japan, in reconstructing post-war Europe, and in responding to North Korea’s invasion of South Korea?

In Obama’s eyes, he is always the aggrieved, always the violated, always the victim of some injustice.

He is America’s virtuous and valorous hero, a man of unusually pure motives and uncommon wisdom, under assault by the forces of darkness.

It is all so darn unfair.

Or maybe a man who was as unprepared to be president as any man in our lifetime — has over the last 16 months shown that he is overmatched by events.

Source: “Obama, the Thin-Skinned President”
http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/05/27/obama-the-thin-skinned-president/

Posted in Obama Administration | Leave a Comment »

Sharpen your pencil, there’s a Walmart truck at your loading dock.

June 3, 2010

Punch line: Walmart is starting to pick-up merchandiser at suppliers docks — rather than have the stuff shipped to WMT distribution centers for subsequent redistribution to stores. Three reasons:

(1) WMT can usually move the stuff cheaper because deals in economical full truck loads and has highly productive logistic processes in place

(2) WMT has the clout to command price reductions that may exceed the suppliers cost cuts

(3) For sure, suppliers will allocate more of their fixed costs to WMT competitors who don’t have the scale, interest or capability to do their own picck-ups

* * * * *

Excerpted from BBW: Why Wal-Mart Wants to Take the Driver’s Seat, May 27, 2010

Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, has become famous — and at times infamous — for the power it wields over its suppliers … to create environmentally friendly packaging and exclusive product sizes, and to participate in joint advertising promotions.

Now, Wal-Mart wants to take over U.S. transportation services from suppliers in an effort to reduce the cost of hauling goods.

The goal: to handle suppliers’ deliveries in instances where Wal-Mart can do the same job for less, then use those savings to reduce prices in stores.

Wal-Mart believes it has the scale to allow it to ship everything from dog food to lawn chairs more efficiently than the companies that produce the goods.

Manufacturers would compensate Wal-Mart by giving the retailer lower wholesale prices for the goods it transports.

Until now, suppliers made most deliveries to Wal-Mart’s distribution centers. The retailer then used its fleet of 6,500 trucks and 55,000 trailers to ferry goods between the regional centers and individual stores. Under the new program Wal-Mart will pick up products directly from manufacturers’ facilities.

That will allow Wal-Mart to carry more per truck and improve on-time delivery rates … and give it  more sway in negotiating fuel prices, thanks to its larger purchasing volume.

The price cuts Wal-Mart is seeking are twice as much as the cost of transporting goods in some cases. In two instances, Wal-Mart asked for a 6 percent reduction in the price it pays for products based on its own cost calculation, while suppliers estimated the actual expense was equal to about 3 percent, the people say.

One side effect of the Wal-Mart plan is that consumer-product manufacturers may face increased transportation costs on deliveries to other retailers as they lose economies of scale on their own delivery fleets.

Suppliers may have to go along with the plan even if their other remaining transport expenses rise because Wal-Mart is so big.

The bottom line: By attempting to take over the transportation from its suppliers, Wal-Mart hopes to achieve efficiencies to cut its own prices.

Full article:
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_23/b4181017589330.htm?chan=magazine+channel_news+-+companies+%2B+industries

Posted in Logistics, Mktg - Pricing | Leave a Comment »

“We’re too broke to be this stupid”

June 2, 2010

Punch line: Beleaguered taxpayers may finally put a stop to the sheer waste of government spending …  Why?  There’s no choice !

* * * * *

Excerpted from Macleans:: We’re too broke to be this stupid, Mark Steyn, May 27, 2010

Back in 2008, a reader wrote to advise me to lighten up, on the grounds that “we’re rich enough to afford to be stupid.”

Two years later, we’re a lot less rich. In fact, many Western nations are, in any objective sense, insolvent. 

It no longer matters whether you’re intellectually in favour of European-style social democracy: simply as a practical matter, it’s unaffordable.

In any advanced society, there will be a certain number of dysfunctional citizens either unable or unwilling to do what is necessary to support themselves and their dependents.

What to do about such people? Ignore the problem? Attempt to fix it?

The former nags at the liberal guilt complex, while the latter is way too much like hard work.

So the easiest “solution” to the problem is to throw public money at it.

Since the Second World War, the hard-working middle classes have transferred historically unprecedented amounts of money to the unproductive sector in order not to have to think about it. We were rich enough that we could afford to be stupid.

To be “poor” in the 21st-century West is not to be hungry and emaciated but to be obese.  When Michelle Obama turned up to serve food at a soup kitchen, its poverty-stricken clientele snapped pictures of her with their cellphones.

In one-sixth of British households, not a single family member works. They are not so much without employment as without need of it.

At a certain level, your hard-working bourgeois understands that the bulk of his contribution to the treasury is entirely wasted. It’s one of the basic rules of life: if you reward bad behaviour, you get more of it.

According to a Fox News poll earlier this year, 65 per cent of Americans understand that the government gets its money from taxpayers, but 24 per cent think the government has “plenty of its own money without using taxpayer dollars.”

There is almost nothing the state won’t pay for. A much-mocked mayor in Doncaster, England, announced a year or two back that he wanted to stop funding for the Gay Pride parade on the grounds that, if they’re so damn proud of it, why can’t they pay for it? He was soon forced to back down.

“Green jobs” is just another of those rich-enough-to-be-stupid scams. The Spanish government pays over $800,000 for every “green job” on a solar-panel assembly line. This money is taken from real workers with real jobs at real businesses whose growth is being squashed.

The social compact of the postwar era cannot hold. Across the developed world, a beleaguered middle class is beginning to understand that it’s no longer that rich. At some point, it will look at the sheer waste of government spending, the other shoe will drop, and it will decide that it no longer wishes to be that stupid.

Full article:
http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/05/27/were-too-broke-to-be-this-stupid/

Posted in Debt - Deficit | 1 Comment »

The power of branding: Ally Bank

June 2, 2010

Have you seen any of the clever commercials promoting Ally Bank?

The ads show a con man  banker taking advantage of innocent children with the equivalent of typical bank practices (e.g. teaser offers, high service fees, misleading fine print).

My opinion: the campaign is very effective positioning Ally as a fair, customer-oriented bank.

Embarrassed to admit that I thought Ally was a new bank, or maybe an obscure one that I just hadn’t heard of …

Then today I picked up on an incidental mention in the WSJ:

Keeping GM alive, albeit in shrunken form, was an expensive undertaking for America’s taxpayers: about $65 billion in all, if one counts government aid to the company’s former financial arm, formerly GMAC, now renamed Ally Bank.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704113504575264641145227612.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_h

How did I miss that one ?

Below is a recap of the rebranding announcement.

Re-branding is usually done out of necessity.

Sometimes an acquiring company loses the right to use a brand name  — think GE household appliances to Black & Decker.

In those instances, you see references back to the old brand – think Brinks Home Security is now Broadview Security – to transfer some of the old brand equity to the new brand.

But, who would want to be associated with GMAC these days?

So, you see Ally signaling that it’s new from scratch with no references to its original branding.

Worked on me !

* * * * *

Excerpted from USA Today: GMAC Bank re-brands itself as Ally Bank, 5/15/2009

The banking arm of ailing auto finance company GMAC is taking on a new name, hoping to smooth its image and entice new customers as it works to drive deposit growth.

GMAC has since been trying to expand its consumer banking offerings to offset sharp declines in new vehicle loan and home mortgage originations.

GMAC Bank has become Ally Bank, which will offer a variety of savings products, including no-penalty certificates of deposits, online savings accounts and money market accounts.

“We are launching a new brand with a new approach of treating customers with total transparency.”

The company settled on the name Ally after extensive interviews with customers.

“The name Ally aptly fit the character of the brand”

The re-branding of the bank, a unit of GMAC Financial Services, is a clear effort to distance itself from its troubled parents, GM and GMAC. 

Full article:
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/banking/2009-05-15-ally-gmac-bank_N.htm

Posted in Mktg - Brands | Leave a Comment »

Bush was dumb … Obama is smart.

June 1, 2010

This caught my attention last week during the press conference, and was reported in the WSJ’s “Best of the Web”.

An interesting illustration of the the way mass media cut Bush no slack, but constantly gives Obama a pass …

  • Headline #1:
    “With Recession Looming, Bush
    Tells America to ‘Go Shopping More’     ”
    ThinkProgress.org, Dec. 20, 2006
  • Headline #2:
    “Obama: Go to Gulf Beaches;
    Most Still Open, Clean    ”
    Associated Press, May 27, 2010

The prevailing commentary to #1:

Freakin’ moron, that was the same advice you gave us after 9-11.

What an AMAZING grasp of economics you have!!!!

The prevailing commentary to #2:

With the summer tourist season about to start, Obama provided timely encouragement to Americans.

He emphasized that they can help people along the Gulf by continuing to visit their communities and beaches.

Hmmm …

* * * * *

See the Best of the Web post titled “The Thinker”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704596504575272542364164212.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_h

Posted in Obama Administration | Leave a Comment »

What does $1 trillion (plus or minus) get you these days ?

June 1, 2010

Answer: If perception is reality, then not much.

Stimulus spending has far exceeded $1 trillion (don’t forget Fed actions and bailouts).

Since the 3 to 4 million jobs saved or created was discarded as a metric, we’ve got look elsewhere for performance measurements.

How about how people assess the effect of Obama’s economic programs on them personally ?

Left-leaning CBS conducted a poll and found that:

  • More people think Obama’s economic programs have hurt (18%), rather than helping them (13%)
  • Less than 1 in 4 Dems think Obama’s economic programs have helped them
  • The vast majority — 68% – think Obama’s economic programs have had no effect on them

So, taking the most favorable view, people think that a trillion dollars in added debt has bought us, well, nothing.

Oops.

image
http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/poll_052510.pdf?tag=contentMain;contentBody

Posted in Debt - Deficit, Economics | Leave a Comment »

The difference between price and value …

June 1, 2010

In my courses, I try to emphasize the difference between price and value.

The Sestak affair provides a memorable (I hope) example.

Background: Fed law prohibits offering something of value to someone to impact the outcome of an election. There seems to be common agreement on that.

Obama’s lawyers’ written explanation tried to parse around the law: Yes, there was an offer, but the position offered was to be uncompensated. So, no violation.

Big mistake.

Even accepting their explanation, Sestak was offered something of value: prestige, access to the President, etc. 

Just because something is free  (i.e. uncompensated) doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have value.

Think about it: the Administration’s argument boils down to having a former President offer Sestak nothing to drop out of the Senate race … ‘nothing’ usually isn’t a strong incentive for changed behavior.

* * * * *

Another example: I’m doing this blog post on WordPress.  I pay nothing to use WordPress’ software and storage … but they provide me with enormous value.

Posted in Obama Administration | 1 Comment »

Newer Entries »