Mish Shedlock is quoting top policy wonk and economist Larry Summers as saying the solution to the econ crisis is more of the same, and then,

Larry Summers may be one of the best examples of the Peter Principle that you can ever find.

However, I suspect a case can be made that Summers did not rise to his level of incompetence, that he was never competent in any position, ever, and that he got where he is out of sheer luck, birthright, bribery, or some combination thereof.

People need to understand that an inherently evil activity, that is government, needs a belief system and philosophy to maintain it.  Keynes wrote his economic thesis as the previous "philosophy" was falling apart, and new one emerged.  Every one of these ideas has an internal contradiction, and that is necessary to maintain the system.

When Joseph advised Pharoah on an economic system, it was clear to Pharoah it was a bad idea for the people, but good for Pharoah.  Every system since then has adopted an internally contradictory construct.  they last for a while, and fall apart.  Mo Tze developed a system of governance that would be recognizable in Hong Kong today, but Kung Fu Tze (Confucious) cam up with a system that rationalized the overwhelming governance system that the Chinese suffered under for 2500 years.  The system that wins is necessarily a bad idea for the vast majority of people.

So when a public official says something nuts like to solve the problem we need more of what caused the problem, they are just doing their job.  They know very well it is a bad idea, but they also know the vast majority of people say "oppress us, but fight our battles for us..."

So the powers that be are clear on this:  agree to the people's demand - oppress them AND take THEIR children to fight their battles for them.  The hallmark of every "great" civilization is child sacrifice.  Americans clamor to have their children shipped overseas to fight their battles for them, so they can be safe.  It has never turned out well in history.

Bookmark this post --- Email this post

Dr. North Slips Up

I read Dr. North assiduously, but he makes an important mistake in his most recent posting on LRC.  He advocates the FCC auction off the subsidized, set-aside radio spectrum that benefits "public" radio.

We all want to end the hated subsidies and set-asides, but here is the problem, in two parts - A.  the government does not own radio waves, in any form, by any definition. B. Radio is an invention, controlling it arrests it.

Radio waves occur naturally, and so when you are between stations or out of range you get static, natural radio waves.  Marconi and others discovered sound could be recorded, transmitted and sent to receivers (radios).  That is an invention.

Around the 1900s a theory emerged that said there was such things as natural monopoly, for such things as roads, telephones and radio.  Therefore, the government should step in and control these things.  But they would say that, wouldn't they?

About 1980, the scales fell from the eyes, and we had the unimagined wonders of the internet when telephones were deregulated, just lightly.  Imagine what we would get with full deregulation!

The internet is an example of unseen goods and services that emerge in freedom, and deregulation is a return to freedom.

As to radio, it is an invention.  100 years ago the invention was in a stone age form.  The government locked down the invention.  So entire swathes of band are allocated to one owner.  This is madness.

Think of a sine wave of a radio frequency, with its up and down pattern.  There is no reason why radios cannot be designed to separate out the wave upswing with the wave downswing for reception of signal, and then build the reception with that half of the wave.  It would be a mere improvement on what we have now.  It is in fact exactly how your computer works.  And email is broken into many packets as it goes out, and on the other end a computer reassembles the parts into a coherent message.

Now, if you can wrap your brain around cutting a bandwave in two, then you can see how where we allocate certain bandwith to one radio station now, we can split it in two so we can serve two radio stations. Call it AM 1000 a and AM 1000 b.  Same bandwidth, just double the capacity.  Old radios might no longer work (or someone would come up with an adapter) but we have plenty of old computers that do not work either, because they cannot handle the internet, a new invention.

Once you understand we can cut bandwidth in two, then you see we can cut that in two also. So, one channel, two channels, four channels, eight channels, 16 channels, 32 channels... on to infinity, for that one dedicated channel of bandwidth.  That is to say, radio is an infinite resource, limited only by mans desire to exploit.  The price of something with infinite supply is very cheap.

But it is the nature of the people who tend toward government to create artificial shortages in order to constrain and control other people.  So when you turn on your radio, you are locked into 100 year old technology.

Eliminate the FCC.  Abandon radio to the free market.  The participants will meet and confer and the most generous and creative will overcome the dour and censorious.  We see it whenever it is allowed to occur.  Jut look at the internet.

Bookmark this post --- Email this post

How Regulations Crush Viable Business

I get all of my shipping materials I need from a company called Uline.  At one point I was working the Office Depot coupons and sales to get stuff cheap, but you just cannot beat Uline.com.

They are also good people.  Let's read an essay from the back of their current catalog, with permission from the boss at Uline:

This past spring, gourmet gift purveyor Harry & David filed for bankruptcy protection. The 77-year-old mail order company is an American business icon famous for its premium fruits, exquisite gift baskets and extraordinary service. 

So what brought the high-end gift giant to its knees? The slide began in 2004, when a New York private equity firm purchased the Oregon-based company for $230 million in a highly leveraged buyout, only paying $82 million in cash. One year later, the private equity firm sold $245 million worth of bonds to pay off the debt and recoup its original investment. Later in 2005 they took out another $19 million. In one short year, the firm recovered 125% of its original investment and left Harry & David saddled with an insurmountable mountain of debt. 

People who knew little about running a successful direct marketing business, let alone fruit baskets, were now calling the shots. Add an economic downturn and you have a recipe for disaster. Sales plummeted from $566 million in 2005 to $426 million in 2010 with only $6 million in operating profits and nearly $11 million in debt service. When a leveraged buyout occurs, everyone loses except the private equity firms responsible for the destruction, in my opinion. Wall Street vs. Main Street. 

For a long time, too many of our brightest and best graduates have been going to Wall Street. It is a new economic era where the U.S. is becoming poorer. Is there any chance that some of the folks will be accepting the challenges that Main Street has? Let's cheer for bright Americans who want to work for Ford, 3M, or Uline over Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. Again, just an opinion. 
Liz Uihlein

I like fact-based opinions.  It is pretty discouraging to work for a company that is not profitable, which means no bonuses either, especially when you know it is not profitable because all of your profits and more go to NYC "investors."  

The banks that put up the funny money for this will have their losses covered by the taxes paid by the people still working at Harry & David, which does continue to limp along.  What may happen is employees or some group that cares buys the company out of bankruptcy, and whatever the difference is taxpayers make it up.   Thems the rules, and the players new it before they moved.

People are blaming "deregulation."  Nonsense, there is no industry more regulated in USA than finance.  The problem is the regulations permit this legal piracy.  The trick is to not "protect" (the root of legal) the bankers and "investors" who do these deals.  Make any lost they incur their loss.  Such deals would not happen.  Current regulations allow the loss to be passed off to taxpayers.  The result is Harry and David is in bankruptcy, the people who own it took out 125% of the value, cash, and banked it, and still own H&D, and whatever they sell it for will be pure profit.  It is madness to write regulations that not only permit this, but protect it.  Rescind those protections.

Why was Harry & David sold to begin with?  No doubt the kids of the founders were facing death tax vs. capital gains tax.  I do not know, but our regulations encourage families to unload assets before death, which leads to terrible loss of value. We need to get rid of death taxes.

But we need the money!  For what, pointless wars?  Declare victory and bring our boys home.  With no bail-outs for stupid banking decisions, with no corporate raiding destroying viable businesses, with no death tax to discourage the business start up or sell-off, we may need those boys here to fill the high paying jobs we'd see as a result.  

Let's switch from war to prosperity as a basis for our economy.

Bookmark this post --- Email this post

Tricky Business Indeed

Wow... within days of me writing this...

After Roman senators and Army leaders murdered the wicked Caligula, with a view to re-establishing freedom in the Roman Republic, they in turn were executed by Claudius, the beneficiary of Caligula's death, executions that met with popular acclaim.
This overthrowing leaders is a tricky business.  The people who murdered Gaddafy now have the problem of pleasing their paymasters in Washington, or they will be replaced by someone who will.  In the same measure, they must betray the Libyan people, which means the new leaders will be far more oppressive than Gaddafy ever was.

The people who executed Gadaffi will be tried themselves...

"We had issued a statement saying that any violations of human rights will be investigated by the NTC. Whoever is responsible for that (Kadhafi's killing) will be judged and given a fair trial."

In spite of the fact that as Hillary Clinton said: We Came We Saw He Died.

Gotta get a scapegoat quick.  Hang someone, any one...

Bookmark this post --- Email this post

How USA Drug Business Works

Here is a drug the FDA approved, NuVigil, from  http://www.nuvigil.com

it helps with a brand new disease they just made up... SWD.

"About shift work disorder (SWD)

SWD is a medical condition that can be diagnosed and treated by a doctor1-4

SWD occurs when your body's internal sleep-wake clock is out of sync with your work schedule—your body is telling you to go to sleep when your work schedule needs you to stay awake. "

So they make up a “disease,”  and the first pill is free  - first 2 weeks free, like the schoolyard drug dealer.  The website is designed to get welfare recipients and anyone else using right away (No printer?  Give us your address and we'll mail you the free two weeks coupon!)... It offers a opportunity for you to create a report for your doctor, doctor prescribes.  Did you know doctors get a kickback on drug prescriptions?  

Nuvigil is apparently addictive, but that's not all... from the website (note the word tablet):

"What important information should I know about NUVIGIL?

• NUVIGIL may cause serious side effects including a serious rash or a serious allergic reaction that may affect parts of your body such as your liver or blood cells, and may result in hospitalization and be life-threatening. If you develop a skin rash, hives, sores in your mouth, blisters, swelling, peeling, or yellowing of the skin or eyes, trouble swallowing or breathing, dark urine, or fever, stop taking NUVIGIL and call your doctor right away or get emergency help.

• NUVIGIL is not approved for children for any condition. It is not known if NUVIGIL is safe or if it works in children under the age of 17.

• You should not take NUVIGIL if you have had a rash or allergic reaction to NUVIGIL or PROVIGIL® (modafinil) Tablets [C-IV], or are allergic to any of the following ingredients: modafinil, armodafinil, croscarmellose sodium, lactose monohydrate, magnesium stearate, microcrystalline cellulose, povidone, or pregelatinized starch.

What are possible side effects of NUVIGIL?

• Stop taking NUVIGIL and call your doctor or get emergency help if you get any of the following serious side effects:

? Mental (psychiatric) symptoms, including: depression, feeling anxious, sensing things that are not really there, extreme increase in activity (mania), thoughts of suicide, aggression, or other mental problems

? Symptoms of a heart problem, including: chest pain, abnormal heart beat, and trouble breathing

• Common side effects of NUVIGIL are headache, nausea, dizziness, and trouble sleeping. These are not all the side effects of NUVIGIL."

Self-medicators note that just about all these "safe" drugs can be crushed for a super high, and note a pattern that if two different drugs do the trick, the bigPharm chooses the one that can be crushed for a super high.  That word "tablet" is code to drug abusers.

Elsewhere on the website

"7% of patients taking NUVIGIL stopped treatment due to side effects, 

7% of patients experience some of the above, and this the FDA approves."

Now, if you are Amish and you sell one of God’s original health foods, raw milk, across a state line, this is what happens to you.  Note, no one makes a scientific claim raw milk is dangerous (although we've been conditioned by highly subsidized big milk to believe so), the crushing of the Amish relates to crossing an imaginary state line.

The regulators are captured by the regulated who control the regulations.

Take away all bigpharmacy subsidies. Deregulate medicine.  Eliminate the FDA, DEA and Ag dept. Watch America prosper.

Bookmark this post --- Email this post

Your House and Your Mustard

For as long as I can remember I whip up my hot mustard fresh from powder (cold water makes hot mustard), and have found Colman's a good brand of mustard powder to use, although bulk purchase is fine.  At Safeway in the spice aisle I gasped to see a 4 oz can of Colman's nearly $10!  Very odd, I recall from a few moments and aisles before that a 4 oz jar of hot prepared mustard was $1.79.  Hang on, powder is supposed to be cheaper than prepared,  like one fifth the price, not powdered five times as much!  This is chaos! What is going on?  What is going on is an excellent example of how inflation, and deflation, works.

First, inflation and deflation are strictly monetary events.  Then we immediately run into the problem of "how do you define money?" but for the purposes of illustration on this one point we can use the looser definitions without wandering into error.  In any any event, inflation is too much money, deflation is too little money, both monetary policy events.  Price increase is not necessarily inflation, nor is price decrease necessarily deflation.  For example, prices can increase in a disaster, and prices can decrease through efficiency, and neither is a monetary policy event.

Current circumstances also illustrate how inflation and deflation can be simultaneous and category specific, for example, how at the same time there can be deflation in housing, there can be inflation in food.

Credit mimics money, although it is not money.  Credit destruction is a mimic of money destruction, so it looks like deflation.  Housing is built on credit.  Credit is destructing, so housing prices are falling.

Food is based on cash.  Money markers (look-alikes) are being created, so prices are rising for cash things. (I know you pay by credit card, but credit cards get paid in 30 days, houses in 30 years.)

Now the trick of the FED is to fund bankers while taxing the middle class into oblivion.  How? Through creating "money."  You need to know how this works, how they nail you without you knowing, boil the frog slowly.  Whether you agree with the system or not, this is how it works.

Say today there are one million units of money, and bread costs 2 units.  And tomorrow the government doubles the amount of money, then eventually, all things being equal, that loaf of bread will double in price to 4 units.  Everything will double in price to absorb the new money. All things being equal, what would be the point?  It is all in the word eventually.

When the banks get the new money, they pay off their debts at the old prices.  OK, but what happens to the newly created money? It is still extra. The new money has not made it to you yet, the effect has not reached your loaf of bread. The new money, introduced at the banking level, will eventually make its way to you, in the vehicle of your paycheck.  But that money is filtered in first at the level of banks, then mines, fisheries and farms, parts manufacturers, finished goods manufacturers, retail and then last but not least, you. All along the process, those transactions absorbed more units of the funny money introduced earlier, raising prices as more money units were applied to the same portions in trade.

That filtration, over time (that word, eventually) means that the money that was created has been absorbed in all of those previous transactions and has resulted in the prices rising in those lower order goods, and eventually surprising you at the retail store, where you buy the higher order goods.  Fresher, faster turning, lower order 4 oz mustard powder is $10, and higher order prepared mustard 4 oz jar, in a jar and slower turning is $1.79.  This is precisely backwards!

Lower order powder packaged last week reflects the higher new costs, whereas the higher order prepared mustard packaged last year reflects the older costs of ingredients.  There are not many products offered in these two forms at retail, so it is a fairly unusual, but illustrative, example.

You can see the process in any Safeway.  When they do another mass run of prepared mustard at the new prices for raw materials, expect "mustard in a jar" prices to sky rocket.  Then it too will either be same price for lower sized jar, or inferior materials used (perhaps recycled Fukushima waste masquerading as mustard, as recycled aluminum smelter toxic waste is recycled as fluoride in USA water systems?)

For now you can see the price rise in the lower order goods making its way to the higher order goods.  Almost all of your purchases are of higher order goods, so you eat the loss from inflation, literally.  For the banks and big-biz/big-gov, inflation, this ruse, is a tax on the middle class that they cannot quite perceive.  Want to raise taxes on the middle class without a vote?  Create more money.

At the same time housing prices are falling.  It is a neat trick, because odious credit behaves like money substitutes.  As credit is destroyed, there is less credit to go around, so people accept less credit to cover the cost of a home, thus it takes fewer credit units to buy a home.  They talk "price" as if in money, but the real estate agent, buyer and banker mean credit.

So on one hand you must pay higher prices in the grocery store to fund the banks, in order that the bankers may be kept whole as the one largest investment in life, your home, goes disastrously down in value.  In a fascist state, the bankers must be immune to all risks.  So as they lose money with you on their stupid loans, only you must make them whole by paying too much at retail.

Your paycheck, pension and property are forfeit, and there is nothing you can do to stop that, except give them up, the sooner the better.  You will get more for them now than later. Then you secede in place by getting self employed.  It is your only defense.

Bookmark this post --- Email this post

The Vatican Steps In It

The Catholic Church, Roman Rite, has a history of presuming good will in all parties, and teaches and acts accordingly.  Their technique is to embrace the powers that be, join them, and then attempt to redirect their efforts to good.  Who knows, overall it may work.  But often enough, no. We obedient Catholics who have to work in the real world find ourselves often perplexed.

The Vatican has put out a document addressing the current economic crisis.  The document calls for,

The Vatican called for the establishment of "a supranational authority" with worldwide scope and "universal jurisdiction" to guide economic policies and decisions.

OK, there is the first round, presume good in others and then embrace some odious proposal (no wonder Newt Gingrich, Tony Blair and Jeb Bush converted to Catholicism) and then redirect...

The world needed a "minimum shared body of rules to manage the global financial market" and "some form of global monetary management".

Aha, and who would manage this... who becomes an angel once they are given more power?  Let's hear from a Cardinal:

 Cardinal Peter Turkson, head of the Vatican's Justice and Peace department, said:

"The people on Wall Street need to sit down and go through a process of discernment and see whether their role managing the finances of the world is actually serving the interests of humanity and the common good."

"We are calling for all these bodies and organisations to sit down and do a little bit of re-thinking."

O dear, the Vatican is inadvertently hilarious.  Asking Wall street to reflect on their methods is like asking Jeffery Dahmer to reflect on his menu choices.

This is ludicrously delusional.  But the Vatican has seen all this before, and knows well of what it speaks, (see Luther):

"If no solutions are found to the various forms of injustice, the negative effects that will follow on the social, political and economic level will be destined to create a climate of growing hostility and even violence, and ultimately undermine the very foundations of democratic institutions, even the ones considered most solid," it said.

They are talking to you, Occupy Wall Street! (OWS)  Since the OWS is a CIA gig, there is nothing the CIA would like more than approval from the Vatican Peace and Justice Committee, no doubt whose meetings are redolent with Ganja, to contribute to their bona fides.  But onward through the looking glass... call to action!

The world needed a "minimum shared body of rules to manage the global financial market" and "some form of global monetary management".


Too late, we've had it evolving since Phoenician times, it is called the Law Merchant, and it is alive and working well.  Only when power is concentrated in few hands (USA imperialism) does the system break down.  So the Vatican is advocating making things far worse.

The Vatican, or correctly, the Pope, is infallible only in matters of faith and morals, not architecture or economics or anything else.  This offering is ridiculous, and deserves scorn.  And guess what, the Vatican has removed it from their website.

Never mind.

Bookmark this post --- Email this post

Goods Damaged In Transit

From my email inbox:

I read your importing book over 2 years ago and have been a self-employed importer / merchant ever since. I've also followed your blog religiously over the last few years. Through your writing, you've been a mentor to me and made a big impact on my life. I'd like to thank you for sharing so much of your thoughts and work.

I've been importing for over 2 years and have never, until now, run into any problems related to damage during transit. Unfortunately I have just had an important shipment destroyed due to water damage.

I did insure the shipment and have filed an insurance claim through my logistics provider. However, I am worried that I won't get a full payout due to the nature of the goods & damage.

The goods were cotton items. The water soaked the cartons and the cotton items wicked up the moisture and humidity. Some of the items were moldy and clearly damaged if you smell them. The cartons were visibly damaged but the items themselves were not visibly damaged because the water evaporated. In most cases, there aren't visible signs of the water damage on the items themselves. Nevertheless, most of the merchandise appears to have been contaminated with mold. It smells moldy or musty and I feel it is unsaleable due to the probability that there is some degree of mold contamination.

I am worried that the insurance company, when it sends a surveyor to inspect the shipment, will decide that the merchandise is not visibly damaged. It is hard to demonstrate the extent to which the items were damaged because it amounts to a subjective impression of how musty or moldy the items smell.

Have you ever had the experience of cotton items becoming wet, moldy or musty during transit? Do you think I'm going to have to fight the insurance company on the question of whether some items were or were not contaminated by the mold? And do you think it is worth retaining the services of a public adjuster to negotiate with the insurance company?

The insurance company has not yet sent a surveyor to inspect the damaged merchandise so I don't know what their judgement will be. Still, I'm wondering if I should start getting ready for a fight. What would you do in my situation?

A

Dear A,

I've never had problems specifically with cotton items, but plenty of times I've had damaged goods and surveyors come in to review.  A couple of things:

Marine insurance is a small but profitable business, with an occasional big loss to cover for the insurance companies.  Your loss is likely quite small, so covering it is nothing to them.

The marine surveyor who will come and look at the goods is very likely an independent contractor paid hourly and has no skin in the game.  You can expect him to be thorough and fair.  If the goods are unsaleable as you say, he will know this, and declare it as such.  The slight challenge is if the goods were packed below standards, you might have a challenge, but  that is unlikely if you indeed selected the best place in the world for your goods, and determined this largely by checking references on your supplier.

You loss will be covered only to 110% of the invoice value, so it will not cover lost business from inability to fill your customers orders.

This problem is another reason we never buy more than minimums from our suppliers, and prefer frequent shipment of minimum orders than large volume orders.  It minimizes our exposure.

I doubt there will be fight.  The inspector will come in, spend bout ten minutes, make notes and take pictures, he might even take a sample, and then send you a report with his findings, and they will send you a check with instructions for the defective goods to be set aside for collection.  The check will have a statement on the endorsement side saying your cashing it settles the matter.

If you paid duties on these sweaters, then you can do what is called a duty-drawback once the defected sweaters are destroyed or exported from USA.  Just keep the relevant documents and fill out this form...

http://forms.cbp.gov/pdf/CBP_Form_7551.pdf

I doubt you'll have any problems, so no need to spoil for a fight.  If not, you can always duke it out later.

Bookmark this post --- Email this post

Is America Resurgent?

Like Rosa Parks, I ain't movin',  so there is nothing I'd like better than for USA to return to peace and prosperity.  Indeed, my teaching is my small effort to help us get there, since a renaissance requires a small business component.

Ergin writes to point out an article from the Telegraph:

Hope you and your family is doing well.I came across this article the other day. Would you care to elaborate? As always thank you so much for being a great motivator and a teacher.ergin..

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/8844646/World-power-swings-back-to-America.html

The first fundamental problem is we cannot have peace and prosperity with centrally planned banking.  Unless we have a free market in banking, there is no coming back.

Second, without a renaissance of new and small business, we cannot recover.  The closer you get to local government, the more vicious the attacks on small business.  The rules and regs on small business crush what would be marginal but viable and profitable employers.  In Seattle recently you must make your employee restroom available to the public if you have more than three employees; parking meters go to 8pm at $2-$4 an hour- if you are not big enough chain to have a parking lot, your small storefront suffers from people unwilling to risk tickets. Never mind these kinds of rules have been shoveled on for 40 years.

Third, Wall Street and Washington have trashed America.  If you plan to stay, then the place has to be cleaned up, and that has to be paid for.  If we stopped the trashing of USA, and raised corporate taxes on profits to 95%, it would take about 30 years to get back to some sort of equilibrium.  I don't object to the tax increase, but it won't work without a concomitant elimination of vast swathes of government.  Without a massive reduction in government, the tax increase will just be wasted on more of the same.

But to stop the trashing, we'd have to bring the troops home and stop the bailouts and subsidies and pro-welfare queen rules for big business in USA.   Neither is conceivable in USA.

Germany in the 1930's was the envy of the depression-plagued world.  Keynes praised Hitler's program in the forward to his German-language version of General Theory, and from China to Argentina to Japan to Britain to USA the progress of national socialism was widely admired and copied.  Sure Germany looked good until 1939 at which point Hitler had been cover boy on Time magazine a few times, but then it started looking bad.  But with Keynesianism, war is baked into the cake.  USA is Keynesian.

Even if every single advantage Evans-Pritchard mentions was operative, then our big gov/big biz leviathan would simply mulct and waste it.

If there is any hope at all in the article, is the stuff is not operative, we will not resurge back into another national socialistic boom time, and avoid the inevitable war that follows those policies.

The USA has weakened itself to where it is reduced to whacking its puppets.  We were not designed to be an imperial power, we do it poorly.  With any luck, we'll return to being the land of the free, the home of the brave.  But we are headed in the opposite direction now, with no light anywhere. Not politics, not education, not law, not science, not religion, not medicine, not military... Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party were instantly and expertly bought off, everyone has been bought off.  This has brought chaos in its wake.

So, you must do what right and wait for the Deus ex machina.

Bookmark this post --- Email this post

Solution: Nationalize Pensions

The AP is lauding the victory in Argentina for a president whose recovery plan features increased government spending by nationalizing private pensions.  The French Revolution cam on the heels of the government seizing the tontines to pay for Versaille and other extravagant projects.

A tontines is pension insurance means, wherein a group of people of the same age join together and make monthly contributions.  The agreement is people do not withdraw from the fund until they reach a certain age, say 50 years old.  Well, from 20 to fifty, many contributors die, leaving enough money for survivors to live on.  It was all voluntary. A fund builds up.  The state stole it leaving elders bereft of old age security.

Here we go again.

Bookmark this post --- Email this post

Plan A or Plan B

As I teach in my seminars on small business international trade, we compete on design, not price;  our tactic is frequency not volume, our strategy is to start a business that we can handle and grow within whatever means we have at our disposal - time talent and treasure.

Obviously I advocate plan A.  You have my reasons for abjuring plan B.  But you need not take my word for it, especially since you can test your hypothesis with little or not risk, and fairly quickly.  Then you can know for yourself.

To be in business you must have customers, so simply name those people you are sure will buy from you.  Then take a sample of your item into those very retailers or whoever and pose your hypothesis:  "I believe if I import these you will buy them from me."  Here at no risk or cost you will get a reply and after several of such encounters, you will have a good idea of what the future would hold if you actually executed your idea.

Now the internet is an extremely difficult place to make money because although web presence is almost free, the cost of driving customers to your product is far higher than any profit you are likely to gain selling anything online.  The proof of this is as of 2009 online retail sales was still only about 4% of total retail sales in USA (3.6 trillion vs 145 billion). (See http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s1055.pdf ) Caution, it opens as a .pdf.

If online was profitable, more would move to it.  Another way of looking at this statistic is 96% of retails sales takes place the old fashioned way, bricks and mortar.  The question arises, why would anyone elect to sell their products where they would miss 96% of their potential customers?

But all of this offers another scenario for testing the Plan B hypothesis that one will sell online.  So simply build a free website, offer your items online for sale with say paypal as a payment method.  Show merely pictures of the item you propose to sell, even if you do not have samples.  You can get coupons from Google Ads for your first $75 in ad costs for free, so go ahead and save the gas of driving around to retailers and buy say $125 of google ads plus a free $75, and see what $200 in online ads gets you for your items.

What if you get orders?  Then say sorry sold out, or buy what you offer and ship it, or whatever ever you like. The good thing is you got a good idea of what to expect at very little cost.

This strategy is compliments of the very many people over the last 15 years who reported to me results of  trying to sell online profitably and got now where, and of course my own experience.  As always though, I am keen on someone showing me a way to do it that works, so I can learn that and teach it too.

Bookmark this post --- Email this post

Now We Did Not Do It

I guess murdering a head of state is not so welcome worldwide... although we did it, we are going to investigate who did it.  I bet we find out we did not do it.

The notice in entirety:

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says she supports calls for an investigation into the death ofLibyan leader Moammar Gadhafi as part of Libya's transition from dictatorship to democracy.

Gadhafi was captured wounded, but alive Thursday in his hometown of Sirte. Bloody images of Gadhafi being taunted and beaten by his captors have raised questions about whether he was killed in crossfire, as suggested by government officials, or was executed.

Clinton tells NBC's "Meet the Press" that she backs a proposal that the United Nations investigate Gadhafi's death and that Libya's Transitional National Council look into the circumstances, too.

Clinton says a democratic Libya should begin with the rule of law and accountability, as well as unity and reconciliation. She says investigating Gadhafi's death is part of the process.

***

And her initial reaction to his death

Bookmark this post --- Email this post