PRODUCTIVITY: Leaders empower their people

Thursday, December 18, 2008

http://execunet.blogspot.com/2008/12/best-email-of-day-award.html  

Tuesday, December 09, 2008
The Best Email of the Day Award

*** begin quote ***

…Goes to Peter Clayton, producer/host of Total Picture Radio. It needs no further commentary from me as it eloquently speaks for itself. Good on ‘ya Peter.

“Capital goes where it’s welcome and stays where it’s well treated.” Walter B. Wriston

Dear Dave,

When “The Citi Never Sleeps” ad campaign was first launched in 1978, Walter Wriston was running the place, and the motto had real meaning. Wriston was highly regarded, as was the institution he lead. Citibank / Citicorp was a cherished brand by its employees and a respected competitor in the financial services industry. Citibank had a unique, authentic, brand identity

*** and ***

According to David, “82% of shareholder value is intangible.” According to John, one-third of all shareholder value is attributed to “brand.
“So here’s an idea I’d like your help with: If we could find 24,000 Citibank employees willing to donate $10 each into a fund to “keep the trains running,” it might give the employees of this beleaguered institution something to be proud of, and smile about. I bet through Twitter, LinkedIn, Xing, and Facebook we could mobilize enough Citibankers to take up the cause. Next year, the Holiday Trains at Citigroup Center exhibit could be “In memory of Walter B. Wriston.” The fund could be set-up as an old-fashioned “Christmas Savings Account.”
*** end quote ***

Dave always finds the great challenging ideas. Worth every nickel of my free RSS subscription.
It is clear that the current crop of “leaders” isn’t worth the power to blow them over. Poof! They’re gone. Gone; absconding with the salary, bonus, options, perks, and benefits. (I laffed at the Ford guy taking a $1/year! If the Congress MYOBed and Ford had to do Chapter 11, he could wave “bye” to his stock and options.)
It’s sad that “leaders” are so dishonest.
The time of large corporations is so OVER!
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POLITICAL: NJ Menedez supports UAW bailout!

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Dear Mr. Reinke:

Thank you for contacting me to express your views on the auto industry rescue plan. Your opinion is very important to me, and I appreciate the opportunity to respond to you on this vital issue.

Without a doubt, the American automotive industry has been a major pillar of our nation’s manufacturing success. Unfortunately, decades of poor business practices have been exacerbated by the recent credit market freeze pushing our nation’s auto industry to the brink of collapse. Such a massive failure would have dire consequences for a struggling economy that saw more than half a million jobs disappear in November alone. With one in ten American workers relying on the automobile industry, failure of this industry could result in the loss of more than 3 million jobs as the ripple effects reverberate throughout the entire economy. New Jersey alone would lose over 65,000 jobs.

There can be no denying that short-sighted management decisions have played a major role in the decline of the Big Three. However, simply letting these companies go bankrupt would cost millions of American workers their jobs – workers who were not part of that decision-making process.   As a member of the Senate Banking Committee, I have paid close attention to the proposals of the automotive industry. Initially, the heads of the Big Three testified before Congress and essentially asked for a blank check. Their plan included little transparency or oversight and provided few details on restructuring or financial solvency. This was simply unacceptable, so Congress demanded that they return with a comprehensive plan.

The plan they later presented on their second visit was much improved and contained a number of important concessions and safeguards. My primary concern with any taxpayer assistance for the Big Three is that there is proper oversight, and that we include safeguards to make sure these taxpayer loans are repaid. This is why we included provisions clamping down on executive compensation, requiring the automakers to issue stock warrants to the government, and prohibiting the companies from issuing dividends until they repaid their taxpayer loans. This legislation also included efforts to address the long-term competiveness of the auto industry. The Big Three have spent the last 20 years fighting fuel economy standards for their products, much to their own detriment. In the long-term, we will require automakers to adhere to strict standards in building cleaner, more energy efficient vehicles, which will benefit America’s national interest as well as the Big Three’s bottom line.

As you may know, the Senate failed, by a vote of 52 to 35, to even bring this issue to the floor for consideration. I voted in support of cloture because I believe this is a vitally important economic issue that, at the very least, warrants debate and consideration in the Senate.

Regardless of your views on this particular piece of legislation, I believe we can all agree that our economy is in a serious recession and more must be done to assist American families. Please rest assured that as your United States Senator, I will do everything in my power to protect jobs and restore our economy so the American Dream is attainable once again.

Thank you again for contacting me with your concerns. For additional information on this issue and my other legislative priorities, please visit my website: http://menendez.senate.gov. It is an honor to represent you in the United States Senate.

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RANT: Guess who will vote for a bailout?

Thursday, December 4, 2008

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/12/03/cbsnews_investigates/main4646424.shtml

Big Three Spending Millions On Lobbying
Auto Makers Drowning In Red, But Still Give Nearly 50 Million Dollars To Politicians
WASHINGTON, Dec. 3, 2008 | by Sharyl Attkisson

*** begin quote ***

The auto industry spent nearly $50 million lobbying Congress in the first nine months of this year.

And people tied to the auto industry gave another $15 million in campaign contributions, CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reports.

*** end quote ***

So, the congresscritters have been bribed?

Argh!

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RANT: Don’t bailout the UAW!

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

http://www.lewrockwell.com/suprynowicz/suprynowicz106.html

Look! There’s Another Wolf! No, I Just Saw Him, Behind That Tree!
by Vin Suprynowicz

*** begin quote ***

Once Congress steps in and forestall the orderly, deliberative process of bankruptcy relief, we’ll likely end up with white elephant auto plants in Detroit that will never again compete on true cost and quality with free-market factories elsewhere, instead turning out “fuel-efficient, green” cars consumers don’t want, under management by a consortium of federal bureaucrats and the labor unions, abetted by a bunch of hollow public relations happy-talk.

*** end quote ***

And, that’s why we don’t want Congress to bailout the UAW!

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POLITICAL: My economic recovery plan

Monday, November 24, 2008

http://www.lewrockwell.com/giles/giles30.html

Fallen Angel
by George Giles

*** begin quote ***

Our one party has two wings blue state socialists and red state fascists, they only disagree on minor conjectures like should we fleece the public fisc through the Federal Reserve, or the Internal Revenue service, or both?

*** and ***

If eternal vigilance is the price of liberty then Americans, as a culture, have been found wanting. The immense debt, the vanishing equity, and the struggling economic infrastructure are the waves upon which our ship of state sails.

*** end quote ***

Wonder if the sheeple will realize they have been had? If we have faith in the “American experiment”, then we can return to our roots of rugged individualism, cast out the socialists, and let the truly free market return us to prosperity. Enlightened individual self-interest is a powerful engine of prosperity. But, we have to be the “home of the free and land of the brave”.

(1) Let the bad actors in the marketplae fail. Citi, GM, NBC, or whomever has a problem; it’s just that. Their problem. Hard bitter medicine? Yes, but essential into correcting the “moral hazard” that our politicians have allowed to happen.

(2) Restore the “uptick rule” that prevents bear raids. FIre the genius at the Treasury, Fed, SEC that changed that one historical gem of an idea.

(3) Restore the marketplace in mortgages. Home ownership may not be for everyone. 20% down! Review every mortgage for criminal fraud. (Rumor hath it that Organized Crime went into the mortgage business.)

(4) End the “Drug Prohibition” policy. Sorry, but it’s nobody’s business what anyone puts in their own body. Pardon all non-violent drug offenders. Allow WalMart to battle the “illegal violent drug dealers”. (The cost of impure illicit drugs will dissolve overnight when Sam Walton’s children become “drug dealers”.) Clean safe drugs at everyday low prices will take all the profit and sexiness out of the drug culture. Hard to imagine a drug war over aspirin level prices. Pot, heroin, crack, and speed for $4 for a month’s supply? Maybe then as a society, we can focus on the medical problems that addicition represents. And, stop killing children both directly and indirectly. Eleimate all the drug agencies: DEA, FDA, and on and on. Consumers Reports, Underwriters Labratory, and “Drug Stores” like WalMart will do a far better job of keeping us safe.

(5) Downsize governemnt at all levels. Let’s conduct a raid on all these bloated kingdoms of waste. Let’s cut 5% per year. Every year.

(6) Let’s cut taxes. Business tax should be 0, but let’s start but cutting it to 10%. (Ireland is 11%!) We know that businesses don’t pay taxes; people do! Personal income tax ditto 10%. And, ONLY ONE ENTITY can collect our 10%. Either Federal, State, or Local gooferment. How they divide it up I care not, but no more than 10%. Property taxes should also be 0. Let the police, fire, and trash be supplied on a competitive basis.

(7) Let’s all MYOB. Marriage should be left to churches; not the gooferment.

How’s that for an economic recovery plan?

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Posted by reinkefj

RANT: We can’t afford ANY “bailouts”

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2008/11/18/93514/227

Why the Big 3 Bailout is Bullshit: Cadillacs Made in China
By nostalgiphile in MLP
Wed Nov 19, 2008 at 05:02:40 AM EST

Tags: bankruptcy, automobiles, Japan, made in China, Detroit, YFI (all tags)

*** begin quote ***

First, they say that between 160,000 and 3 million manufacturing jobs are on the line, but then turn around and blame the unions (the organization that represents those workers). In fact, foreign (mainly Japanese) automakers employ almost as many Americans as the “Big 3” do (113,000). Helping GM, Ford, and Chrysler could actually hurt those American auto-workers at non-Big 3 factories.

*** end quote ***

These “bailouts” are wrong on so many levels it’s hard to find a positive reason FOR them.

My pocketbook can’t afford it. So, sorry Chapter 11.

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POLITICAL: Nuke the FED!

Monday, November 3, 2008

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/austrian-econ-more-than-ever.html

Why Austrian Economics Matters More Than Ever
by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

*** begin quote ***

Abolishing the Fed would put a huge brake on the planning state. Without the ability to expand the money supply at will, the federal government would become about as threatening as state or local government. That is to say, the federal government would still be an intolerable imposition on life, liberty, and property. But we wouldn’t be worrying about hyperinflation, large scale bubbles in specific sectors, crazy business cycles, trillion-dollar bailouts, controls that reach into every nook and cranny of our lives, a cradle to grave welfare state, or a global empire that invades any and every country at will, and makes America the enemy to whole regions of the world.

That’s only the beginning of what the end of the Fed would mean. It would dramatically change the political culture in this country. Bureaucracies would tumble. Trade would stabilize. The investment-risk calculus would accord with the free market. The left could no longer live out its pipe dreams of socialist utopia at our expense. The right would have to give up its wacky notion of a world police state. The power ambitions of whole sectors of society would be scaled back.

The state is always and everywhere a danger, even when it has no monopoly on money and no printing press that can create money tickets at will. But a state with the ability to make its own money is a grave and relentless threat to prosperity and freedom. It leaves the future entirely to the discretion of the money managers. Every day we live under the threat that the US could be the next Weimar Republic or even another Zimbabwe. All that stands between us and that day is the wisdom and prudence of the Fed.

*** end quote ***

There was a fundamental shift in America that was done without the People even being aware of the terrible path they were being taken down.

With the financial meltdown (i.e., criminal collusion between Congress and Wall Street), it seems like an appropriate time to put the Fed out of business.

It’s un-American!

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POLITICAL: Make work, and infrastructure, is just inflation spending!

Saturday, October 18, 2008

http://channel-surfing.blogspot.com/2008/10/use-public-works-to-put-public-to-work.html

Friday, October 17, 2008

Use public works to put the public to work

*** begin quote ***

Anyone who thinks we can balance the federal budget and dig ourselves out of the financial quagmire is just fooling themselves. We can’t, and Paul Krugman explains why today:

{Extraneous Deleted}

On the other hand, there’s a lot the federal government can do for the economy. It can provide extended benefits to the unemployed, which will both help distressed families cope and put money in the hands of people likely to spend it. It can provide emergency aid to state and local governments, so that they aren’t forced into steep spending cuts that both degrade public services and destroy jobs. It can buy up mortgages (but not at face value, as John McCain has proposed) and restructure the terms to help families stay in their homes.

And this is also a good time to engage in some serious infrastructure spending, which the country badly needs in any case. The usual argument against public works as economic stimulus is that they take too long: by the time you get around to repairing that bridge and upgrading that rail line, the slump is over and the stimulus isn’t needed. Well, that argument has no force now, since the chances that this slump will be over anytime soon are virtually nil. So let’s get those projects rolling.

*** and ***

Amen.

*** end quote ***

Posted by Hank Kalet at 5:38 PM

# – # – #

fjohn said…

Can’t you see the utter absurdity of the gooferment printing more money to spend on make work projects? They are counterfeiters! See that’s why they want you confused about what is money. (And have done a superb job of dumbing down the entire population!)

Forget the “dollar”. It’s meaningless. It’s not a store of value, unit of account, or useful intermediary.

Lets pretend that a gallon of gas is a unit of money. How can the gooferment just print gallons of gass? It can certainly print more receits for gallons of gas, but someone is going to get screwed when they can’t redeem their receit for the gallon it represents.

So too, regardless of what you think a dollar represents, somebody in this “printing press” money gets screwed.

Let’s have a guessing game?

Senior citizens on fixed income as prices rise! Very good.

Anyone who holds an “old dollar” as the new ones get printed. Excellent!

Any one who has to buy something. You get the prize!

Who wins? (If there are losers, there has to be winners!)

Politicians who get to spend these counterfiet dollars first.

Unions, especially gooferment ones, who have contracts tied to the minimum wage or inflation escaators.

Those who hold commodities and land. (The gooferment can’t print more of those.)

So, now maybe, just maybe, you will see this as the fraud, the theft, the cheating of the poor, that it really is.

How fortunate we have the gooferment to save us all.

{Shaking my head in disbelief. How can smart people be soooo blind!}

Sheeple!

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RANT: It’s not an “economy” failure, nor a “free market” failure. It’s a “political” failure!

Saturday, October 11, 2008

On Oct 10, 2008, at 10:08 PM, P wrote:

*** begin quote ***

From: “Chuck & Joyce”
Date: October 10, 2008 7:18:54 PM EDT
To: <Undisclosed-Recipient:;>
Subject: Fw: Our failed economy

Back in 1990, the Government seized the Mustang Ranch brothel in Nevada for tax evasion and, as required by law, tried to run it. They failed and it closed. Now we are trusting the economy of our country to a pack of nit-wits who couldn’t make money running a whore house and selling booze?

*** end quote ***

TO WHICH I REPLIED:

the economy hasn’t failed. we’ve failed to keep our politicians in line with what the dead old white guys outlined as the proper role of gooferment. at our own peril. anyone who votes for an incumbent this year is part of the problem. even if the incumbent had NOTHING to do with it or did nothing bad, they were: (1) tacitly complicit; (2) too stupid to realize what was coming down the road; OR (3) ineffective to stop it. Look at how many times Ron Paul was the lone voice “no”! No on the war. No on taxes. No on Fannie and Freddie. No on the Fed. Sigh. Best gooferment money can buy. Sorry. It wasn’t an economy failure; it was a political failure. We may become the next hyperinflation — like present day Rhodesia, Argentina of the 70s, or Germany of the 1930s. We know how well those all worked out. Gold coins may be needed. The Dead Old White Guys told us that was money. But we didn’t listen as FDR and Nixon fooled us. The 1913 FED started to procession to where we are today. Spinning out of control. Does no good to be right when the commonweal goes over the cliff taking us all to perdition. Argh. It’s all socialism and the elite in their hubris have led us there. Now where is my pitchfork and torch!

# – # – #

Warning! Don’t stick your fingers in the Libertarian’s cage and poke or prod them. They can snap back. Us little L libertarians are very frustrated. No amount of warning “Here comes The Cliff” has done any good. All we get are dumb looks as people ask “Who’s Cliff?” Guess you know now. Welcome to what Mises, Hayek, Rothfarb, and all the “Austrian School” economists have been warning about!

Don’t blame me. I supported Ron Paul!

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Posted by reinkefj

FUN: Training?

Friday, October 10, 2008

FROM LUDDITE:

*** begin quote ***

An Indian walks into a cafe with a shotgun in one hand and pulling a male buffalo with the other.

He says to the waiter: ‘Want coffee.’

The waiter says, ‘Sure, Chief. Coming right up.’

He gets the Indian a tall mug of coffee. The Indian drinks the coffee down in one gulp, Turns and blasts the buffalo with the shotgun, Causing parts of the animal to splatter everywhere And then just walks out.

The next morning the Indian returns. He has his shotgun in one hand, pulling Another male buffalo with the other. He walks up to the counter and says to The waiter ‘Want coffee.’

The waiter says ‘Whoa, Tonto! We’re still cleaning up your mess from yesterday. What was all that about, anyway?’

The Indian smiles and proudly says …

‘Training for position in United States Congress: Come in, drink coffee, shoot the bull, Leave mess for others to clean up, Disappear for rest of day.’

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