More from this authorWhy Customer Service is Valuable “There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.” -Sam Walton Founder, Walmart #BIGBUSINESS
Strictly Markets From $266 to $54.25 in a matter of hours. An 80% fall puts the dramatic crash of the dot-com bubble at the beginning of the century to shame. Even Cypriot banking customers were recently allowed to keep more of their deposits. And this is the “currency” that is supposed to compete and replace fiat currencies, like the US dollar and the Euro, to create a more stable and trust worthy financial system. Source: bitcoin.clarkmoody.com Advocates of BitCoins usually argues that it is the lack of government involvement, central banks and limited and finite supply that make BitCoins a valid and superior alternative to fiat currencies. Business Insider (BI) argues very well against this idea and concludes that BitCoins don’t have any intrinsic value but that fiat currencies do. BI points out that fiat currencies has the “slight” advantage, over BitCoins, of a legal system, authorities and the full force of the army backing them. Whilst this is a strong argument, let’s forget that for a minute, j
RT | May 24, 2013 Bank lobbyists have a direct influence on financial legislation drafted in Congress, and are in some cases even writing the measures themselves. Citigroup this month drafted a regulation bill that has already passed through a House committee. To soften financial regulations, bank lobbyists frequently ‘assist’ lawmakers in writing draft legislation that serves to benefit them at the expense of American taxpayers, according to a New York Times investigation. Lobbyists working for Citigroup Inc., a multinational financial services corporation, wrote 80 percent of a regulation bill that was approved by the House Financial Services Committee this month. Citigroup wrote 70 lines of 85-line bill, which exempts “broad swathes of trades” from new regulation, the Times reported based on e-mails it obtained. Two paragraphs of the bill were copied “nearly word for word” from what Citigroup drafted. The only difference between the versions were two words, which lawmakers changed t
In arguably the weakest national security speech by a commander in chief, Obama denied Thursday that our terrorist enemy is inspired by Islam — while at the same time appeasing Islamic critics by apologizing for drone strikes and agreeing to throttle back on such precision bombings, and close down the terrorist prison at Guantanamo. Talking Points!! He vowed to wind down further military actions in the war on terror, arguing he can protect America through law enforcement actions, instead, as if the threat comes from bank robbers or other common criminals. His mea culpas and capitulations will only embolden the Islamist enemy. In case you missed the interminably long and rambling speech, here are some of its many pusillanimous lowlights: • “Force alone cannot make us safe. We cannot use force everywhere that a radical ideology takes root; and in the absence of a strategy that reduces the wellspring of extremism, a perpetual war — through drones or Special Forces or troop deploymen
Welcome to the final Saturday Six-Pack for May 2013! Grab your mug and settle in. Here are are six of the best articles I’ve read recently. Most are faith-focused or ministry-minded; others are just a bit of who-knows-what! If you need help starting, begin with my two *Picks of the Week*, and move from there. For a steady stream of such links, follow me on Twitter ( @JasonBandura ) to the right of this post. Sharp quotes and solid articles are tweeted 3-4 times daily. Today’s edition: 1) Six Recent Lessons from Turnaround Churches Thom Rainer has discovered that 9 of 10 North American churches are shrinking or growing at a rate behind their communities. Here are six lessons he recently learned from such churches who are turning it around. 2) The Divine Dance (*PICK OF THE WEEK*) Scot McKnight shares these Tim-Keller-filled reflections on the Trinity. What does it mean? A whole lot! 3) Learning the Gospel from My Children A pastor named Jason Micheli recently preached this
Cameron Herold had all the signs of a child who could not learn. He writes about how he was not overly successful in school, he had a hard time paying attention, was dyslexic, and was considered “ADD”. What he was good at was finding ways to be creative, and turning those creative ideas into money. He sold hangers back to the cleaners for pennies. After a few thousand hangers, the pennies added up. He sold comic books to other children – and charged the rich kids more. Basically what Mr. Herold did was what I recommend to all of my students when they ask me about jobs: “find or create a product or service that people want and sell it to them”. Usually it is babysitting services for the girls or lawn care / snow shoveling / dog walking for the boys. On the lengthy list of things we don’t teach our young people is what successful entrepreneurs do, and have done to be successful. Mr. Herold has some great ideas about how to teach entrepreneurship
China Daily: “China will never pursue temporary economic growth at the expense of environmental degradation, President Xi Jinping vowed on Friday. Xi Jinping 习近平 (Photo credit: Wikipedia) “Those who made rash decisions regardless of the ecological environment, resulting in serious consequences, must be brought to account, and should be held accountable for a lifetime,” he said. “Only by implementing the strictest system and the most stringent rule of law can we provide reliable protection for ecological civilization.” Xi was speaking during a group study session attended by members of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and environmental scholars. Meng Wei, head of the Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences and an academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, was one of the two key lecturers at the session. He told China Daily that by using the words “held accountable for a lifetime”, Xi is re
Dire prediction about water shortage in the future. I hope I am still alive to check this one. Note there is also a prediction about the world’s population. Excerpt below. Full article here. The majority of people on Earth will face severe water shortages within a generation or two if pollution and waste continues unabated, scientists warned at a conference in Bonn Friday. “This handicap will be self-inflicted and is, we believe, entirely avoidable,” read a document entitled The Bonn Declaration issued at the close of the four-day international huddle. The conference sought to assess the evidence of man’s impact on freshwater resources, which constitute only 2.5 percent of the total volume of water on Earth. Currently, an estimated third of the world’s seven million people has limited access to adequate fresh water, according to conference delegates. “In the short span of one or two generations, the majority of the nine billion people on Earth will be living under the handicap of
Link to article: Sumatra, Indonesia: the rainforests last stand – video | Global development | guardian.co.uk. Sumatra, Indonesia: the rainforest’s last stand – video [Note: Apologies, don't seem to be able to embed the video, but do click the link and watch the video on the original article. It's heart-wrenching and a good reminder of what it happening, even if we're miles away.] The rainforest of Sumatra in Indonesia is steadily being turned into a giant industrial plantation that can neither support the wildlife that lives there nor the native human population. Environmental groups estimate that at the current rate of deforestation, the natural rainforest will be all but gone within 20 years, and little is being done to stop it. John Vidal witnesses the struggle for survival of one of the most beautiful and diverse ecosystems on Earth • Warning: contains images that some might find distressing
“Goal line technology.” After considering options such as attaching magnetic chips and/or accelerometers to game balls, FIFA has decided to test the use of 14 HD cameras in the July 2013 Confederations Cup to verify ref calls on whether soccer balls have crossed the line into the goal box. When the technological request for proposals was issued, FIFA estimated the new equipment would cost about EUR 200,000 per stadium, whatever they ended up using. (TOOOOOR lean ian TECHH nick.)
By Con George-Kotzabasis-May 22, 2013 The Marxistoid professor of economics Yannis Varoufakis (In his keynote speech in the Subversive Festival of Zagreb, Croatia, on 14th May, 2013, he confessed himself to be an “Erratic Marxist”), whom Marx himself would have placed under the category “vulgar” for following the footsteps of the great man loosely, in a choleric and ideologically tendentious article on his website, argues, that the “The Greek Success Story” is “The latest Orwellian Turn of the Greek Crisis.” All the favorable indices by which the “international press and the money markets seem to concur,” to quote him, that the country is on the road to recovery, are to the professor a contrived fiction and “vile propaganda” by the Samaras government to deceive and fool investors and to inveigle them to make “cheap investments” in the country with the prospect of high profits. According to Varoufakis’ argument, among the deceived and the fools are not only investors but also renowned c
By Con George-Kotzabasis-May 22, 2013 The Marxistoid professor of economics Yannis Varoufakis (In his keynote speech in the Subversive Festival of Zagreb, Croatia, on 14th May, 2013, he confessed himself to be an “Erratic Marxist”), whom Marx himself would have placed under the category “vulgar” for following the footsteps of the great man loosely, in a choleric and ideologically tendentious article on his website, argues, that the “The Greek Success Story” is “The latest Orwellian Turn of the Greek Crisis.” All the favorable indices by which the “international press and the money markets seem to concur,” to quote him, that the country is on the road to recovery, are to the professor a contrived fiction and “vile propaganda” by the Samaras government to deceive and fool investors and to inveigle them to make “cheap investments” in the country with the prospect of high profits. According to Varoufakis’ argument, among the deceived and the fools are not only investors but also renowned c
Imagine a world where the physicists and engineers spent most of their time figuring out how to get internal combustion engines from 20 to 22 percent efficiency but where, outside of the lab, everyone else is riding horses because they think engines are evil and witchcraft and tools of capitalist oppression. Maybe it’s not quite that bad in economics, but it isn’t far from it. There is much more from Eric on this issue here. Also see Brian Caplan here and here. During our last election cycle I posted a status to my Facebook arguing that to promote a more vibrant democracy we should stop spending energy encouraging participation from the marginal voter and instead read one thoughtful research paper that disagreed with a view we held dear. My status was not well received.
