Listening to: Katy Perry, One of the Boys

Feeling: extremely pissed but trying to be positive

I’ve been thinking about shifting careers. Yes. It depends how you look at it. Some of you may think it’s a good thing, me having this dilemma this early in life. OR this late, as college has come and gone and so has my board exam, and in a little over a year’s time so will my license.

Still I can’t deny the fact that I am really thinking about this. I love what I’m doing. It’s just so discouraging. And it doesn’t help when you have parents who just don’t get you and they don’t even try. Or no room for you to call your own where you can just be yourself and have no one complain about how messy you are. Or any opportunity for growth (or anything at all) because you’re not filthy rich and you’re not friends with them either.

I’ve tried all my life to be perfect for other people. Maybe it’s time I stop trying and just go and do what makes me happy (and face all the retarded consequences that go with it).

SHIT.

Lord help me.

Guys

Thanks to everyone for your support on this blog…it means so much to me.
It’s that support that has inspired me to launch a second, more focused and dedicated blog.

I’m about to embark on Mission: Impossible, and I would like to invite you all along for the ride.
Please check out: A New York State of Burg .

Its a diary like no other, that I hope will not just inspire me… but others too….

Many of the MBA career aspirants are ready for the battle, all of them trying to bell this CAT (Common Admission Test). Just one day to go for the examination and students’ heart beats already thumping high. Combined Admission Test (CAT) conducted by the IIMs is believed to be one of the toughest exam in the world, more gruelling than the GRE and the GMAT put together.

Where the number of applications has decreased this time due to online examination system, the stress level has also been doubled.

But don’t worry!!! Even daring to face it is itself a bold step towards your dream.
It doesn’t matter what you have done till now as you can’t change it. What matters is that what shall you do from now onwards to make that change..

It is not always necessary that everybody can and will be able to crack the test with ease in the first attempt. I have seen many people with far worse percentiles. No person is defeated until and unless he believes that. So never let the option of defeat for yourself. CAT is not the end of life… There are many more options available in life.

Cracking CAT is also not an impossible target .. many students achieve this target year on year …. It just needs the right preparation, passion and approach. Afterall the achievers are also the simple students like us and not the superheroes…Moreover the word impossible itself says,”I M POSSIBLE.”

Always remember..”Hard work never goes waste and always shows it’s colour in some or the other form.”

My Best Wishes to all the MBA aspirants…

Shilpa Sharma / www.aglakadam.com / 27.11.2009 /

Relax … (takes a deep breath before you read this)

Author unknown:

An interesting reflection: Slow Down Culture………

It’s been 18 years since I joined Volvo, a Swedish company. Working for them has proven to be an interesting experience. Any project here takes 2 years to be finalized, even if the idea is simple and brilliant. It’s a rule.

Globalize processes have caused in us (all over the world) a general sense of searching for immediate results. Therefore, we have come to possess a need to see immediate results. This contrasts greatly with the slow movements of the Swedish. They, on the other hand, debate, debate, debate, hold x quantity of meetings and work with a slowdown scheme. At the end, this always yields better results.

Said in another words:

1. Sweden is about the size of San Pablo, a state in Brazil.

2. Sweden has 2 million inhabitants.

3. Stockholm has 500,000 people.

4. Volvo, Escania, Ericsson, Electrolux, Nokia are some of its renowned companies. Volvo supplies the NASA.

The first time I was in Sweden, one of my colleagues picked me up at the hotel every morning. It was September, bit cold and snowy. We would arrive early at the company and he would park far away from the entrance (2000 employees drive their car to work). The first day, I didn’t say anything, either the second or third. One morning I asked, “Do you have a fixed parking space? I’ve noticed we park far from the entrance even when there are no other cars in the lot.” To which he replied, “Since we’re here early we’ll have time to walk, and whoever gets in late will be late and need a place closer to the door. Don’t you think so?” Imagine my face.

Nowadays, there’s a movement in Europe named Slow Food. This movement establishes that people should eat and drink slowly, with enough time to taste their food, spend time with the family, friends, without rushing. Slow Food is against its counterpart: the spirit of Fast Food and what it stands for as a lifestyle. Slow Food is the basis for a bigger movement called Slow Europe, as mentioned by Business Week. Basically, the movement questions the sense of “hurry” and “craziness” generated by globalization, fuelled by the desire of “having in quantity” (life status) versus “having with quality”, “life quality” or the quality of being”.

French people, even though they work only 35 hours per week, are more productive than Americans or British. Germans have established 29 hour workweeks and have seen their productivity been driven up by 20%. This slow attitude has brought forth the US’s attention, pupils of the fast and the “do it now!“. This no-rush attitude doesn’t represent doing less or having a lower productivity. It means working and doing things with greater quality, perfection, with more attention to detail and less stress. It means reducing rejects and wastage. It means re-establishing family values, friends, free and leisure time. Taking the “now”, present and concrete, versus the “global”, undefined and anonymous future. It means taking humans’ essential values, the simplicity of living. It stands for a less coercive work environment, more happy, lighter and more productive where humans enjoy doing what they know best how to do.

It’s time to stop and think on how companies need to develop serious quality with no-rush that will increase productivity and the quality of products and services, without losing the essence of spirit.

In the movie, Scent of a Woman, there’s a scene where Al Pacino asks a girl to dance and she replies, “I can’t, my boyfriend will be here any minute now“. To which Al responds, “A life is lived in an instant“. Then they dance to a tango.

Many of us live our lives running behind time, but we only reach it when we die of a heart attack or in a car accident rushing to be on time. Others are so anxious of living the future that they forget to live the present, which is the only time that truly exists. We all have equal time throughout the world. No one has more or less. The difference lies in how each one of us does with our time. We need to live each moment.

As John Lennon said, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans“.

Congratulations for reading till the end of this message. There are many who will have stopped in the middle so as not to waste time in this globalized world.

yeSyeSWay

Rainbow Boom!

Rico and Therese’s pre-nup was last Nov. 2, 2010. Want to see more photos and read the full story? Click on this link:

Noel Salazar | Philippine Wedding Photographer | Imagine Nation

During tough times such as now doing more with less has become the norm’ rather than the exception. Therefore, why should your social media strategy be any different. Many organizations are hesitant to allow workers to have access to social media applications at their work-stations even now amidst all the positive and compelling  evidence of the amazing things being accomplished. This is due primarily to the fear that employees will become distracted by the inherent social factor, the farm town gifts, mafia wars, pokes, super pokes and redundant quizzes. However by cracking down it’s possible that they are missing prime opportunities to optimize their brand, content and social currency.

Employee Evolution claims that the best strategy is to make every employee a social media representative, a tool for furthering the needs of the organization rather than a weight around the neck used to slow momentum.

I tend to agree with this view point. By allowing employees to take part while on the clock, you are giving them ownership of the brand, creating a sense of pride and loyalty that will ultimately serve to benefit the organization. Want to convince your supervisor? Here are a few key points to remember when presenting the case for social media at work:

1. Empower by encouragement-Give a person ownership and you will create a sense of pride, empowering them and also helping to ensure that they will be good public representatives of the organization. If you have ownership then you feel loyalty towards the organization that creates that feeling. Simple right?
2. Make everyone an equal-This is a big one. Rather than getting caught up in silo-type thinking, allowing only either the top reps or the grunts to speak out, let everyone be on equal footing. This supports the first point about empowerment. Doing this helps to humanize an organization making them appear to be much friendlier and appealing to the public.
3. Build creativity while cutting costs-Allowing everyone to participate means that an entire collection of creative minds with different skill sets will be utilized rather than a select few. Creativity tends to stagnate if not poked occasionally with the big fork of distinction. You also save money by taking advantage of existing resources, and who doesn’t want to save money?

Do you work for a progressive organization? Share your story about how you engage with the public via social media at work. Is it working for your company? Or do the employees take advantage? If you are banned from using social media while on the clock, why do you think that is?

Leverage The Internet To Get A Job

We’ve heard about how great social networking can be to our job or career. For instance, by connecting with past colleagues and friends over the Internet, I’ve increased my chances for getting job leads which eventually led to actual job offers. I’ve been using LinkedIn as one great resource for connecting with others professionally. Facebook can potentially do the same job if you take a professional stance with your profile. Then there are many others who have immersed themselves in a creative job hunt by setting up web sites that reflect and market their accomplishments.

So yes, the Internet is a fabulous resource that you can leverage to land a new job. But there’s a flip side to this — especially when you end up sharing too much of yourself online. Here’s aninteresting article about how the online world can be hazardous to your career, plus more thoughts on this below (courtesy of our guest poster, Jacques Sprenger):

Can Online Social Networking Break Your Career?

It used to be, before the birth of the Internet, that applying for a good job only required a good, short, crisp, resume and a terse, professional, cover letter. In the past, your resume writing andjob interviewing skills plus a quick background check would be enough to get you hired. Well things have changed for the job seekers of today.

Nowadays, it’s a whole different ball game because of Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and other such wonderful social networks. If you don’t believe this assertion, try to Google yourself. That’s what employers do, according to a CareerBuilder.com survey: “Employers are checking job applicants’ profiles on sites like Facebook, Brightfuse and LinkedIn.”

What are employers looking for? Incriminating information and material that job candidates probably shouldn’t be posting in his/her profile — stuff that betrays the image of the professional who fits the mold of the ideal employee. Such as Marilyn (not her real name, of course) who was filmed by a “friend” when she was lying on the sidewalk, completely drunk and minus her clothes. The “kind friend” promptly posted her visage on Facebook, complete with first and last name of the victim.

Or how about this survey that claims that “35 percent of job recruiters have dropped a job candidate because of information uncovered online”? These days, it’s not that hard to make someone look bad: if you ever become the target of someone who is tech savvy, say because of envy or rage, then watch out! It wouldn’t be too hard for the conniving perpetrator to post numerous profiles of you as someone with a past (criminal), a boozer, or any other filth they may think of. Guess what the prospective employer will think after Googling you?

Stuff To Watch Out For Online

Here’s a list of things you may want to beware of, when you set out to cultivate your online presence:

1. Watch what you say in a social network.
The troublemakers of this world have found a new way to reduce everybody else to their own mediocre level. You can sink yourself, however, by not being careful. As qouted from Regulargeek.com: “for some reason, many people have the idea that if they use a social network or other popular website they can say whatever they want.” Even a silly statement uttered as a joke can backfire on you if a potential boss fails to see the humor. Extreme case in point: a couple of miscreants thought it was funny to post their malicious antics on the web. Nothing funny about landing in jail!

2. Avoid writing about your company.

You may want to steer away from discussing your work or job on the Internet (except, maybe, if you do it anonymously in a forum like Glassdoor.com, where you can rate your job, company and salary). Complaining about your company (past or current) may have ill consequences. From Buzzle.com, here are top reasons given by employers for not hiring someone based on an Internet search:

• Lying about job qualifications (31%)
• Poor communication skills (25%)
• Links to criminal behavior (24%)
• Trash-talking previous employers (19%)
• Posting inappropriate photographs online (11%)
• Using unprofessional screen names (8%)

3. Avoid questionable associations.
In these trying times, when finding a job is so difficult, a small mistake in your past may make all the difference. Imagine using a screen name like nakedmonkey, or partygirl, or killingmachine. Speaking as someone who worked in Human Resources in the past, I would strongly hesitate hiring someone with questionable associations, especially during an employer’s market.

How To Defend Your Reputation

Okay, so you have some blots on the web that may affect your chances; so what is one to do? I heard of at least one innovative company that vows to “defend your good name on the Internet”. Companies like ReputationDefender will, for a fee of course, take care of the problem and keep monitoring your unwanted presence on the Internet until you cancel the membership. But you don’t have to go this far when you can simply take reasonable steps to keep your name clean online. It would be so much cheaper not to be caught in your underwear with a bottle of beer in each hand when a “friend” is taking pictures.

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by SILICON VALLEY BLOGGER

Woke up this morning at 6:30 to run in the VA Beach Turkey Trot 10k…it’s a good race and everyone is really nice–the runners, the volunteers, the spectators. It’s not too long of a distance, but its long enough to feel like you burned off part of the Thanksgiving dinner you’re about to partake in! My lovely Mama and Daddy went with me to the race, then I got my Starbucks coffee fix (it’s a bad expensive habit!) and did a little shopping for Christmas decorations. Speaking of decorations, we decorated almost the whole house yesterday…only things left are wreaths on the windows, a live tree with old-fashioned decorations for the dining room, and of course lots and lots of holiday baking! One of my favorite pastimes

Right now, I’m about to go have a wonderful dinner with my favorite family members…I love spending time with alllll my family (and I have a LOT of family!). I was thinking about things I am thankful for, and I have quite a lot. Here’s a few that are most important:

1) All of my favorite people–my parents, especially! All of my family, my beyond amazing boyfriend, and my best friends and everyone else who makes my life so special

2) A warm, safe house to come home to every day…so many people are without, and I just wish I could do more to help them avoid homelessness.

3) The jobs that my parents currently have…they have stable careers which is a blessing considering how many people have lost their jobs. I have numerous relatives and family friends who have lost their jobs in the past few months, so I know its a terrible feeling.

4) Being able to attend college, and earn my degree in 6 more months. Let’s face it, college is expensive, and its not easy for my family to afford it either but they know an education is priceless and definitely worth the $$$…and worth the time for me!

5) Being healthy and having the ability to run, which is my favorite thing to do. I seriously don’t know what I would do if I couldn’t run. It really helps create a balance in my life, like yoga does for some people. Running the 10k this morning made me realize how thankful I am!

6)Finally, I couldn’t skip one thing I’m always thankful for…Starbucks! Yes it’s sounds bad, diva-ish maybe? But I appreciate a nice strong cup of coffee every single day, and it helps me get through my day and stay caffeinated throughout the day. Caffeine addict?!

These shoes inspire me to run everyday

-xoxo

SUPER MOM

Superwoman, everyone said.

Super Competent, her appreciative employers said.

Super Reliable, her impressed clients said.

Super Talented, her professional peers said.

Super Boss, her devoted subordinates said.

Super Bitch, her jealous frustrated passed over colleagues said.

Super Shrewd, her business rivals said.

Super Fit, her fitness freak buddies at her gym said.

Super Sexy, her admirers said.

Super Lover, her lovers said.

Super Achiever, her teachers and professors said.

Super Parent, her children’s teachers said.

Super Friend, all her acquaintances said.

Super Daughter, her parents and in-laws said.

Super Wife, her husband said.

Super Mom, her children said, but secretly they wished she stayed home like their granny who was always there for them.

VIKRAM KARVE

Copyright © Vikram Karve 2009

Vikram Karve has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

R9WPUP5YBJXY

It is the current trend to hire only those technologists with specific industry knowledge. Why?

If you are working on a specific project that requires detailed knowledge…do so. But keep in mind that no technologist will have your level of business knowledge. It is impossible. Your perspective is different from the competitor…isn’t it? You risk hiring a technologist that believes that his or her knowledge is correct without challenge.

Often this factor of a technologist having industry experience is taken for granted even though it really has minimal value and, in fact, may detract from value. Think of a person that has expertise working in the industry. What he or she brings are ideas and knowledge of common practices. Is that going to help you beat your competition or further commodize your business?

Once you eliminate that industry knowledge is an important hiring decision, you open the possibilities of new thinking of a problem. A person that is from a different industry or has a broader exposure to multiple industries will listen more intently to where you want to take the business. The technologist may even have ideas that will add to your company’s uniqueness value. By hiring a non-industry technologist, you minimize the more often than not “but this is how the industry does it” filter.

You have the right to choose (within reason) who you work with on the technology side of the house. Focus on skill knowledge (programming, architecture, analysis, testing)…not industry knowledge.

Or: Watching Me Watching You!

This year, I was honoured and humbled to be named one of Marketing Magazine’s “Ones to Watch” in the publication’s annual survey of the top marketers under 30. I just slipped in in this, my last eligible year.

Congratulations to my fellow nominees:

• Che Kothari
• Mike O’Sullivan
• Lisa Lang
• Ryan Collis
• Ed Lee
• Adam Zolis
• Natalie Farand
• Christina Ponte
• Sean Hazell
• Richard Gallagher & Stephen Beck

There are a lot of online people in the list and here’s what Marketing Mag said about that shift to online:

Much of the future of this industry will be written online, in new and emerging media, on channels that only sprung up yesterday and others that will spring up tomorrow. The young people profiled on the following pages will be the ones writing some of the most exciting chapters.

Whether they’re creating websites, spreading word-of-mouth buzz in the blogosphere or moving mass brand strategies online, these professionals, all under 30, have already turned heads across the industry and seem destined to do so for years to come.

And here’s what they had to say about me (with a few corrections thrown in from me):

“Experience isn’t necessarily a yardstick of talent,” says Ed Lee.

It’s an appropriate observation from a man who entered the PR game by “accident” and in six short years became Veritas Communications’ youngest ever managing director when he was appointed to the lead role of the social media division com.motion at just 29.

London, U.K.-born Lee studied anthropology and politics at Oxford Brookes University before a friend told him about an internship at GolinHarris in London.

“I turned up not knowing anything about PR,” he says. Lee received “amazing on-the-job training” and stayed at the firm for a year. He and his then-girlfriend (a Calgary native who later became his wife) moved to Toronto in 2004 (actually 2005). Lee started as an account director Senior Consultant at Strategic Objectives before moving to Fleishman-Hillard. It was here he realized his passion for the online space, and after three months moved over to the firm’s interactive arm, iStudio.

This past January, he received a call from com.motion founder Keith McArthur, who was looking for his own replacement after accepting a job as senior director of social media and digital communications for Rogers. The two met up, along with Veritas president Beverley Hammond, who after 10 minutes knew Lee was a “rock star.” In February, he joined com.motion.

Lee “is the kind of guy who gives you complete confidence in his knowledge,” says Hammond.

Since his arrival, com.motion has doubled in size (note: we are on track to grow approx x3 in 2009!) and has added Guinness, Subway, Genworth Financial and Wines of Ontario to on its client roster. An obvious advocate of social media, Lee isn’t one to innovate for innovation’s sake, says Hammond. All of Lee’s programs evolve from the same starting point: a strategic look at the client’s business and communications objectives and their key audiences.

For example, Lee gave hockey fans a place to rally in support of Canadian BlackBerry billionaire Jim Balsillie’s bid to bring a new NHL hockey franchise to southern Ontario. He developed the content for MakeItSeven.ca, where visitors could add their names, voices and video messages of support, and link to other social media sites.

The effort generated around 28,000 Facebook fans and 4,500 Twitter followers, while nearly 200,000 fans signed up for the campaign newsletter. The Globe and Mail compared the effort to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign for its use of social media to recruit and engage supporters.

Outside the office, Lee maintains his own blog, Blogging Me Blogging You (note: now edlee.ca) and co-founded Third Tuesday Toronto, a meet-up dedicated to introducing social media to the mainstream communications community. The group has more than 2,200 members with chapters in Halifax, Montreal, Ottawa, Calgary and Vancouver. Lee is definitely one to watch, and you can, on his blog… Twitter… Facebook…(what about LinkedIn?!)

Besides this very kind write up which Kristin Laird gave me, the most gratifying aspect of this was an ad which the Veritas Team placed in the article:

Advertising and PR working in concert. As it should be.

I try to do my job to the best of my ability and feel slightly uncomfortable with these sort of individual accolades – especially as I know that anything I do and achieve is more about the people who have supported me, cajoled me and inspired me throughout my career.

I think Sir Isaac Newton said it best when he said:

If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.

And that’s how I feel every day. From the moment I walked into GolinHarris to report to Barry Leggetter through to (almost) three great years of working under Katherine Fletcher at iStudio, all the way through to just last night when Bev Hammond and I discussed the next few years of com.motion’s [explosive] growth, I’ve been lucky enough to have amazing mentors to show me the right, and wrong, way to do things.

While this is an amazing accolade and I am as proud as punch to receive it, it is also a double edged sword. This puts more pressure on my shoulders to do an ever better job – to accomplish a much harder task. To realise my potential. I don’t want to be the old man of the office who lives off of past glories.

No, success (if you can classify this as such) is not a place you get to but an ever evolving state of mind.

WASHINGTON — Suddenly the Federal Reserve is everybody’s punching bag.

Strip the Fed of its bank regulation powers, some in Congress are demanding. Get probing audits of its behind-the-scenes operations, others say.

The chairman of the Federal Reserve Board is always fair game for criticism and second-guessing, usually over interest rate actions. But this year the criticism is much broader as Congress responds to widespread public anger that the Fed bailed out Wall Street but not ordinary Americans, and with unemployment in double digits.

Former Fed chairman William McChesney Martin Jr. famously said that the central bank’s job was to yank away the punchbowl just when everybody is starting to party. And while Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has signalled the Fed will keep interest rates low for now, a round of higher rates inevitably will come.

The Fed finds itself both the punchbowl keeper and the punching bag. Imagine the outcry when it does begin to crank up rates â?? perhaps just ahead of next year’s midterm elections.

Fireworks seem likely at Senate confirmation hearings early next month on President Barack Obama’s nomination of Bernanke to a second four-year term as chairman.

Many economists and Fed watchers say congressional efforts to rein in the Fed’s powers could interfere with the central bank’s ability to help guide the fragile economy to recovery.

The Fed’s very independence and its unique ability among U.S. institutions to create money out of thin air enabled it to act quickly to stabilize the nation’s financial system after it froze up last September after the bankruptcy of the Lehman Brothers investment house, Fed backers say.

“It might have been the Fed’s finest moment when it had to jump into the market,” said David M. Jones, a former Fed economist and president of DMJ Advisors, a Denver-based consulting firm. “We still have to wait to see how effective the Fed is in its exit strategy and whether it can keep inflation in check. But this badgering by Congress, even if there is populist sentiment, is inappropriate.”

The Fed’s aggressive intervention also set the stage for the current criticism. Many lawmakers question whether the Fed’s money machine has mainly benefited financial markets and not the broader economy. Lamakers are also peeved that the central bank acted without congressional involvement when it brokered the 2008 sale of failed investment bank Bear Stearns and engineered the rescue of insurer American International Group.

Bernanke, first appointed by President George W. Bush, has worked closely with both Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Bush Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson in confronting the worst financial crisis in decades. Geithner also has gotten his share of congressional wrath, mainly for his administering of the $700 billion bank bailout fund.

“In the past, the Federal Reserve was held in very high esteem,” said Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, a libertarian who ran a quixotic third-party presidential campaign in 2008. Now, it’s “the source of our problem,” suggests Paul, author of the bestseller “End the Fed.”

Usually an outlier, Paul suddenly has found an army of at least 307 House colleagues and 30 senators marching behind his legislation to subject the Fed to intense scrutiny by Congress’ Government Accountability Office. The House Financial Services Committee endorsed Paul’s approach 43-26 last week over objections from its chairman, Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass.

The bill would authorize Congress to audit not only the Fed’s lending programs but its basic decisions to set monetary policy by raising or lowering interest rates. Paul has been introducing a version every year since the early 1980s, but this is the first time it has garnered any serious attention.

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, D-Conn., who will preside over Bernanke’s confirmation hearings, has proposed legislation that would strip the Fed of its bank-regulation authority and give the Senate a role in selecting the 12 regional Federal Reserve bank presidents.

Dodd says his measure would return the Fed to its core mission of setting monetary policy, claiming it proved itself “an abysmal failure” by not cracking down on risky lending practices that led to the financial meltdown.

Dodd is in an extremely tight battle for re-election, even though he has served in Congress for 35 years.

“I don’t think it ever hurts to have a member of Congress stand up and denounce the Fed. There is a lot of anger out there, and this is basically a therapeutic gesture,” said Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University.

Still, Baker said, it probably isn’t wise to tamper with the formula that makes the Fed “very much an anomaly in American government. It’s independent, it has to be. You don’t want the Fed to be under the control of the president. And it kind of sits out there — not in the executive branch, not in the legislative branch, not in the judicial branch. Sort of its own little element in the separation-of-powers constellation.”

While the Fed is subject to some congressional oversight, its decisions don’t have to be ratified by the president or Congress. Fed officials are not paid with money appropriated by Congress.

Should Bernanke be worried?

“Not only should he be worried, he’s clearly ratcheted up his game in terms of his communications with Congress,” said Norman Ornstein, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

Ornstein said the Fed bashing this time is different from before, with “a broader base of support. And it’s coming from people who in the past would not have hit the Fed. There’s a lot of populist anger out there — on the left, in the center, and on the right. And politicians are responsive to that.”

Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee

Monday, November 23, 2009 1:51 PM

A page one, top-of-the-fold New York Times report Monday warns that U.S. debt is rising so fast that the federal government is careening toward a “payment shock” in the not-too-distant future.

The Times lead headline read: “Federal Government Faces Balloon in Debt Payments: At $700 Billion a Year, Cost Will Top Budgets for 2 Wars, Education, Energy.”

The Times headline appears eerie just as the Senate moves to push forward on a radical healthcare reform — with CBO estimates for a final bill costing nearly $1 trillion dollars over the next year.

The national debt now stands at over $12 trillion and the White House estimates that the cost of servicing the debt will rise to more than $700 billion a year in 2019, up from $202 billion this year. The Times suggests that $700 billion annual payment cost may be conservative.

The additional $500 billion a year in interest payments would surpass the combined budgets this year for education, energy, homeland security, plus the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Times observes.

Treasury officials face not only huge new debts incurred in response to the economic meltdown but a balloon of short-term borrowings coming due in the months ahead, and interest rates that are certain to return to normal levels when the Federal Reserve concludes that the fiscal emergency has passed.

Link to Article

“I’ve looked under chairsI’ve looked under tables

I’ve tried to find the key

To fifty million fables”

From The Seeker by The Who

-

I’ve always been a seeker. A seeker of success, of meaning, of a wonderful mate, also of material things sometimes.

We all have inherent desires in this life. However, sometimes the more we seek for these things, the more elusive they seem. Maybe we’re looking in the wrong places.

I heard an amazing thing this past weekend while attending a seminar in Joshua Tree, California. It was this -

Stop seeking the right partner; just become the right partner.

For me, this meant stop seeking for things and just be Who You Are. Stop looking for the right partner, and just be the right partner. Stop seeking creativity and just be creativity. Stop seeking success and just be success, to attract all these things towards you. Just be and let it flow through you. Just be Who You Are.

If you would, please breathe that in for a moment. Be Who You Are. Be this breath. Feel your butt in chair. Hear the whisper of the wind. See the beauty around you. Feel the coolness or warmth on your skin.

Don’t seek. Just be. Start from a place of “having”. Of being all that you are, already.

If you’re like me, life has been about being on some kind of quest. A quest to find purpose, a quest to build a successful business, a quest to contribute to others in the deepest way. And certainly, a quest for love.

For some reason in this life, things happen to each of us that close our heart. We have experiences, we are hurt, we get wounded. I don’t know why that seems to be the natural order of things. I understand intellectually that the only way for us to grow is to go through challenges, but shoot, does it have to be that way? Something is telling me – Yes. You’ve probably heard that in order for a butterfly to survive after coming out of its cocoon is for it to struggle on its own the whole time. That if it is helped in any way to come out of the cocoon, it will not have built the strength necessary to fly. So I understand that the experiences and wounds that we’ve developed are here to strengthen us. They are here so that we grow into stronger, more joyous beings.

But we don’t live that way.

It’s easier for us to wallow in the hurt, to let the experiences close us down.

Here’s a question -

How do you keep an open heart when there are so many things that seem to be trying to close it?

Even if you love yourself enough to allow yourself to open up to love again(wow, how wonderful is that thought?), then another person will invariably do or say things(whether they mean to or not) to hurt your heart, to close it once again. How do we keep it open?

Maybe it’s not about keeping it open. Maybe it’s just about recognizing when it’s been closed a little and being brave enough to make the conscious effort to open it fully once again. To envision great wings opening up, spread eagle, over your chest and heart.

For me, I’d rather be brave and open up, then spend a life too afraid to live and not experience the heights of joy that only an open heart can bring.

So with your music, your business, or your partner, how can you open up, a little at at time like a rose, so that your heart can experience the joy that is inside? A heart only lives fully when it’s open. There’s unending joy in there. There’s an infinite supply, regardless of the experiences that you’ve had.

Be brave.

Open up.

Feel the joy.

However, once you get a little love or success, it’s easy to then transition from Being to Possession. What I mean is that you then want to hold on to it. So then it becomes about having the other person in your life, having success, having a fan base, and owning them or it in some way. It can easily turn into wearing it as an ego gratification.

Here’s an idea – Let go of the idea of possession in any way. And once again, just be the love, be the creativity, be the passion that had the relationship, music, or business thrive to begin with.

Don’t seek. Just be.

If you are a fiduciary for your employer’s retirement savings plan, you already know that life isn’t getting any simpler. Lawsuits against plan fiduciaries are on the upswing, and some fiduciaries have been found personally liable for plan losses under ERISA, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974.

What you may not know is that neither your company’s directors’ and officers’ (D&O) insurance nor the bond that all retirement plan sponsors are required by law to carry will indemnify you for claims involving benefit plans. The former excludes such claims; the latter covers only plans themselves. Instead, you need fiduciary-liability insurance, and if you don’t know whether you have it, you should find out.

This wasn’t such an urgent issue a decade ago. But the litigation landscape began to change in 2004 when 10 former outside directors of Enron Corp. were together forced to cough up $1.5 million of their own money, without recourse to insurance or indemnification, to settle a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Labor. The suit alleged mismanagement of employee retirement funds, which were heavily invested in Enron stock that became worthless after the company imploded in an accounting scandal. Prior to that time, the idea that corporate officers or directors might have to open their own wallets to settle such a case was virtually unthinkable.

Since then, the floodgates have opened, with plaintiffs’ lawyers filing dozens of lawsuits against retirement plan sponsors and their executives who, they claim, committed a variety of fiduciary mistakes, from countenancing exorbitant vendor fees to stocking their plans with inappropriate investment options. Some of the cases have been dismissed, but many continue to grind their way through the court system. All the while, defense costs are accruing.

Link to Article

By Jeff Clark
Stowe, Vermont

“There’s no doubt in my mind that we’ll have a mania in gold. And because the gold and especially silver markets are so tiny, the rush into them will be like trying to push the contents of Hoover Dam through a garden hose. Our positions will go absolutely ballistic.” – Doug Casey, September 2009

There’s certain to be a rush into gold and silver, and buying before Main Street catches gold fever is the only way to play this trend. Because when Midas fever hits, prices will explode to the upside, for both the metals and the stocks. How do we know that?

First, let’s look at gold. If we added up all the gold ever mined on the planet, its total value would equal no more than $5 trillion at today’s prices. Yet, look at how this compares to the debt and bailouts and other monetary mischief of current governments…

Let’s make this chart very clear. Of the $5 trillion in gold ever mined…

• The US government has thrown over twice as much at the economy in the past 12 months.
• The US debt is more than double this amount so far this year.
• Total global government bailouts are almost four times larger (and this is a conservative figure; one estimate puts it at $24 trillion).

I intended to include annual gold production as one of the comparisons, but the chart isn’t big enough and neither is your monitor: 2008’s global gold production equaled about $73 billion, and to make that figure discernable on the chart would require the Global Bailouts bar to hit the ceiling above your head. That’s how small the gold market is.

The implications are undeniable: when the greater public rushes into gold – whether in response to inflation, dollar woes, war, whatever – the price will be forced up by an order of magnitude.

While physical gold will protect our wealth, it’s the gold stocks that can potentially make us wealthy.

Once again, to get a sense of the Lilliputian size of the gold industry, I compared it to several other leading industries and stocks.

The value, as measured by market capitalization, of all gold producers around the world is less than Wal-Mart’s. Every gold stock would need to nearly double just for the industry to match ExxonMobil. The oil and gas industry is about 12 times bigger.

When your neighbors and relatives and co-workers and friends all start clamoring to buy gold stocks, the pressure on prices will be enormous, rocketing our positions upwards.

Meanwhile – and admitting we’re first and foremost gold bugs – the picture for silver is even more dramatic. The potential for silver stocks is jaw dropping.

If the gold industry is tiny, then silver’s $9 billion market cap makes it a nano industry. The entire silver industry is over 21 times smaller than gold’s! If gold explodes, silver will go supernova.

Consider these macro-facts about a micro-market and what they reveal about silver’s enormous potential:

• There are over 200 companies in the S&P 500 with a market cap larger than the entire market of silver producers.
• There are five times more gold stocks than silver.
• Total silver production in 2008 was valued around $10.3 billion (at today’s prices). That represents just 1.5% of the $700 billion bailout last year, and 0.006% of the current US monetary base.
• Of the 20 largest silver producers, only five actually call themselves a “silver” company, due to the fact that about 73% of all silver mined is a byproduct of other metals mining.

Any flood into the silver market would overwhelm it. In other words, the rise will be stunning. While it’s not going to happen tomorrow, I strongly suggest you get on board before that rocket ship takes off.

Just putting these charts together stirred my feelings of restlessness, making me anxious for the mania in precious metals to arrive. But the timing is not up to us. Be patient, because if you’re invested in gold and silver and the respective, high-quality stocks, you’re on the right side of this trend.

Regards,

Jeff Clark
Senior Editor, Casey’s Gold & Resource Report
for The Daily Reckoning
By Jeff Clark
Stowe, Vermont

“There’s no doubt in my mind that we’ll have a mania in gold. And because the gold and especially silver markets are so tiny, the rush into them will be like trying to push the contents of Hoover Dam through a garden hose. Our positions will go absolutely ballistic.” – Doug Casey, September 2009

There’s certain to be a rush into gold and silver, and buying before Main Street catches gold fever is the only way to play this trend. Because when Midas fever hits, prices will explode to the upside, for both the metals and the stocks. How do we know that?

First, let’s look at gold. If we added up all the gold ever mined on the planet, its total value would equal no more than $5 trillion at today’s prices. Yet, look at how this compares to the debt and bailouts and other monetary mischief of current governments…

Let’s make this chart very clear. Of the $5 trillion in gold ever mined…

• The US government has thrown over twice as much at the economy in the past 12 months.
• The US debt is more than double this amount so far this year.
• Total global government bailouts are almost four times larger (and this is a conservative figure; one estimate puts it at $24 trillion).

I intended to include annual gold production as one of the comparisons, but the chart isn’t big enough and neither is your monitor: 2008’s global gold production equaled about $73 billion, and to make that figure discernable on the chart would require the Global Bailouts bar to hit the ceiling above your head. That’s how small the gold market is.

The implications are undeniable: when the greater public rushes into gold – whether in response to inflation, dollar woes, war, whatever – the price will be forced up by an order of magnitude.

While physical gold will protect our wealth, it’s the gold stocks that can potentially make us wealthy.

Once again, to get a sense of the Lilliputian size of the gold industry, I compared it to several other leading industries and stocks.

The value, as measured by market capitalization, of all gold producers around the world is less than Wal-Mart’s. Every gold stock would need to nearly double just for the industry to match ExxonMobil. The oil and gas industry is about 12 times bigger.

When your neighbors and relatives and co-workers and friends all start clamoring to buy gold stocks, the pressure on prices will be enormous, rocketing our positions upwards.

Meanwhile – and admitting we’re first and foremost gold bugs – the picture for silver is even more dramatic. The potential for silver stocks is jaw dropping.

If the gold industry is tiny, then silver’s $9 billion market cap makes it a nano industry. The entire silver industry is over 21 times smaller than gold’s! If gold explodes, silver will go supernova.

Consider these macro-facts about a micro-market and what they reveal about silver’s enormous potential:

• There are over 200 companies in the S&P 500 with a market cap larger than the entire market of silver producers.
• There are five times more gold stocks than silver.
• Total silver production in 2008 was valued around $10.3 billion (at today’s prices). That represents just 1.5% of the $700 billion bailout last year, and 0.006% of the current US monetary base.
• Of the 20 largest silver producers, only five actually call themselves a “silver” company, due to the fact that about 73% of all silver mined is a byproduct of other metals mining.

Any flood into the silver market would overwhelm it. In other words, the rise will be stunning. While it’s not going to happen tomorrow, I strongly suggest you get on board before that rocket ship takes off.

Just putting these charts together stirred my feelings of restlessness, making me anxious for the mania in precious metals to arrive. But the timing is not up to us. Be patient, because if you’re invested in gold and silver and the respective, high-quality stocks, you’re on the right side of this trend.

Regards,

Jeff Clark
Senior Editor, Casey’s Gold & Resource Report
for The Daily Reckoning

By Stephen C. Webster
Tuesday, November 24th, 2009 — 9:50 pm

As the number of problem U.S. banks swells to the hundreds, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is increasingly hard-pressed to fill in the gaps where institutions have put depositor’s funds at risk.

Unfortunately, a dire prediction made by government officials in early 2009 has come true: the FDIC’s deposit insurance fund is now broke, according to published reports.

“The deposit insurance fund dropped by $18.6 billion during the third quarter of 2009 to negative $8.2 billion, as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. set aside $21.7 billion in provisions for additional bank failures,” The Wall Street Journal reported. “This is the second time in the agency’s history that the balance has fallen into negative territory.”

In March the FDIC took steps to stave off the possibility that its insurance fund would run dry, instituting new fees on banks, forcing them to pay to protect consumers.

The head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Sheila Bair, wrote to bank leaders declaring that “without these assessments, the deposit insurance fund could become insolvent this year.”

According to the FDIC’s most recent quarterly report, there were 552 “problem” banking institutions in the U.S., the most since the end of 1993.

“In its state of the industry report, the F.D.I.C. reported that banks posted a $2.8 billion gain in the third quarter, after a $4.3 billion loss in the previous period,” The New York Times reported. “The number of bad loans of nearly every stripe — credit cards, mortgages, small business and commercial real estate — continue to grow, albeit at a slower pace.”

BizJournals added: “Fifty institutions failed during the third quarter, bringing the total number of failures in the first nine months of 2009 to 95. As of Nov. 21, 124 banks have failed nationwide.”

“The FDIC has not yet accessed a temporary $500 billion fund of capital it has available to it from Treasury for the insurance fund,” Marketwatch notd. “The FDIC estimates that bank failures will cost the agency as much as $100 billion over the next five years, with the majority of the losses taking place in 2009 and 2010. The agency may require banks to pay additional assessments to cover losses to the fund if bank failures expand in greater numbers than anticipated by the agency.”

When banks insured by the FDIC are seized or declare bankruptcy, the agency returns depositors’ funds up to $250,000.

Read the FDIC’s full Q3 2009 report [PDF link].

With AFP.

An earlier version of this report said the FDIC insures depositors’ funds up to $100,000. The government-run agency expanded its coverage for consumers from $100,000 to $250,000 in 2008. President Obama further extended the additional cushion until the end of 2013.

Nov. 24, 2009 at 2:49pm

Commercial banks and savings institutions insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) reported aggregate net income of $2.8 billion in the third quarter of 2009. Earnings were more than three times what was reported a year earlier and an improvement over the industry’s $4.3 billion net loss in the second quarter 2009.

In contrast, outstanding loan balances declined by the largest percentage since quarterly reporting began in 1984.
“There is no question that credit availability is an important issue for the economic recovery. We need to see banks making more loans to their business customers,” said agency Chairman Sheila Bair. “This is especially true for small businesses that rely on FDIC-insured institutions to provide over 60 percent of the credit they use.”

Total loans and leases declined by $210.4 billion (2.8 percent) during the quarter. Loans to commercial and industrial borrowers declined 6.5 percent, and real estate construction and development loans declined by $43.6 billion (8.1 percent).

The number of institutions on the FDIC’s “Problem List” rose to its highest level in 16 years. At the end of September, there were 552 insured institutions listed, up from 416 on June 30th.

The complete Quarterly Banking Profile is available on the FDIC Web site.

For those of you still worried about selecting your major, a reassuring study, reported in Inside Higher Ed, suggests “giving students time to figure out their academic paths may actually result in their making better career choices, too.”

The study was published  by (and is available for purchase from) the  National Bureau of Economic Research.  It compared English university students who typically select their course of study early and Scottish students who undertake a much broader curriculum for their first two years at university before specializing.

According to the Inside Higher Ed story,

the data showed that students who emerged from the English institutions were about 20 percent more likely than their peers in Scotland to end up in careers that were not aligned with their university majors. The patterns hold up not just immediately after graduation, but six years after students left college, too.

English students… “were specializing so early that they’re making more mistakes.”

You can read the full story at http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/11/25/nber