Minimum Order Quantity FOB Tactic

There is a disconnect in international trade promotion, where on one hand the experts brought into elucidate in international trade share the "if it bleeds it leads" stories that demonstrate the expertise of the speakers.  Those considering importing or exporting hear these hair raising tales think twice about entering the field.  What is not mentioned is the speaker is still standing, though, right?  That is to say, like all business problems, they get managed.

What is not shared is the ancient practice of small test orders.  I was taught 40 years ago about this, and I am sure it had been handed from generation to generation.    I think the transmission was broken, as one of just another very many examples of the damage done in the economic boom cycles.

So now it is being "rediscovered."  I am happy to see it.  The Hong Kong Trade Development Office did a study in 2012 that showed the practice is widespread, called it a trend and are no pushing it.  All to the good.

Here are some examples of the MOQ FOB, from Hong Kong.

http://www.hktdc.com/suppliers-products/Organic-Kidney-Bean/en/1X07ZU3F/2105939/

http://www.hktdc.com/suppliers-products/Organic-Dried-Apricot/en/1X06QPLC/1774254/

http://www.hktdc.com/suppliers-products/T-Shirt/en/1X06VVLU/2063668/

MOQ FOB relates to B2B.  Of course B2C has always had this...

http://hawaiian-tropical-flowers.com/anplan.html

MOQ FOB is an essential tactic in small business international trade.

Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.

Bookmark this post --- Email this post

Everything Is Secret!

News from American Defector Edward Joseph Snowden's email service...

http://lavabit.com/

Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.

Bookmark this post --- Email this post

From Employee to Consultant - How To Make the Shift

Anthony checks in with a delightful story from the BBC on a well paid fellow who hired people overseas to do his work.  (This got lost on my computer, so I put it up just now):

"The employee, an "inoffensive and quiet" but talented man versed in several programming languages, "spent less than one fifth of his six-figure salary for a Chinese firm to do his job for him", Mr Valentine said.
"Authentication was no problem. He physically FedExed his RSA [security] token to China so that the third-party contractor could log-in under his credentials during the workday. It would appear that he was working an average nine-to-five work day," he added.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21043693

And he watched cat videos!  He could have started another business. 

But he did start another business.  He was thinking of his "employer" as a client, and with the money he was paid gave his "client" the very best value for their money.  His job was providing management services for his "client" (employer).

Now what is curious to me about this is the fact that this was going on in the 1980s, so I presume it has blossomed wildly in the last 30 years.  When a firm like Microsoft or Google has a "brilliant" Asian worker who seems to produce as much as ten others, perhaps it is because he has ten others working for him.

With the foreign expert immigration H1-B visa program such a benefit to tech companies, and the bane to USA tech engineers, perhaps someone should study to what degree USA tech engineers are competing against H1-B engineers, who happen to have a posse back in Bangalore doing the heavy lifting.

Now,  I have no problem at all with this.  The job is getting done.  I would just say those USA tech engineers who cannot compete alone against Fan + 12, simply line up your own 12, like the enterprising fellow upon which the BBC reports.

No doubt this fellow will lose his job and perhaps face sanctions.  Too bad.  I'd love to work with him. And the "barefoot bandit" teen who eluded law enforcement for a few years as he had no problem figuring out how to escape in airplanes and boats on intuition as to how they worked, and the child who scammed his way onto flights across the country to see his grandpa.  We prosecute these kids!  Crazy!

Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.

Bookmark this post --- Email this post

Bootleggers and Baptists

DiLorenzo has a very funny article about city government crushing entrepreneurs...

The Downtowner is always fully booked and for good reason; the young drivers are prompt, exceptionally polite and courteous, and it’s free! What a great way to start your post-college career as an entrepreneur. Not surprisingly, the city government of Delray Beach is apparently doing everything it can to drive The Downtowner out of business.

This is a theme...  how do those who crush new business expect to have their pensions funded?

Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.

Bookmark this post --- Email this post

Money and No Money

We ascribe many magical things to money.

1. Money can make us happy.

2. We can do things with money.

3. It takes money to make money.

4. Our value can be assessed.

5. We can influence others.

But the fact is, and most people thriving do things without money, make money without money, are happy, have fine self-esteem, and influence others without money.

I do very much know, having been self-employed for forty year, just how dreadful being short of money can be.  People are right to dread that part of being self-employed.  That becomes one of those existential moments you have to deal with in life.  See the Rabbi on that.

People who go into business to make money are a delirious as people who want to do business so they can pay a rent.  Profits measured in money is just another business expense.

I don't teach people how to make money, they can do that without me.  I save people time and money getting to the lifestyle they want, which is made possible by serving others in business.

Right now people want savings coming into a time when savings will not help you.  The only thing that can save you in coming times is the degree to which you are integrated in business with others.  There are your real savings.

Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.

Bookmark this post --- Email this post

Why We Will Not Have Prosperity

The problem with prosperity is it cannot be perceived in advance.  As mentioned earlier, the root of the word is Latin for "hope."  We think of prosperity as the house, the car, then bank account, stock portfolio, the club, the vacation when in fact it is prospective:  open opportunity for what is good.

The hope-root of the word is a theological virtue, this captures the sense of that:

1818 The virtue of hope responds to the aspiration to happiness which God has placed in the heart of every man; it takes up the hopes that inspire men's activities and purifies them so as to order them to the Kingdom of heaven; it keeps man from discouragement; it sustains him during times of abandonment; it opens up his heart in expectation of eternal beatitude. Buoyed up by hope, he is preserved from selfishness and led to the happiness that flows from charity.

It is all prospective: aspirations, inspirations, expectations, happiness.  Bastiat did a modern turn on this in 1850:

I mean Foresight. For this purpose I shall examine the consequences of certain economical phenomena, by placing in opposition to each other those which are seen, and those which are not seen.

As Bastiat demonstrates in a series of examples, we cannot see what good would occur in freedom.  And freedom is like that.  Unimagined good comes from it.  A recent example of this was the deregulation of telephones by Hero-President Jimmy Carter.  There was no foreseeing the economic advancement of computers tied to phones and cell phones getting dirt cheap when he made The Move.  No one saw it coming.  But the temporary pain opened up to much good for many.  (I recall telephone company employees calling in talk radio descrying deregulation and the inconvenience to their careers.)  No Jimmy Carter, no Steve Jobs, no Amazon.com, no email, no internet.

The choices we have right now are -

X. Murder Afghanis for their natural resources so 20 year employees can have 40 year vacations

or

Y. Deregulate medicine.

94% of those who vote pick X.  In a democracy, the 94% is actually a minority, but as Thoreau lamented

the war to be “the work of comparatively a few individuals using the standing government as their tool.” 

Thoreau was talking about the Mexican war, where Southern farmers stole territory from Mexico to plant cotton crops that had depleted US farmlands.  And General Grant said the US Civil War was Divine Retribution on the South for their war on Mexico.

The Southern rebellion was largely the outgrowth of the Mexican war.  Nations, like individuals, are punished for their transgressions.  We got our punishment in the most sanguinary and expensive war of modern times.

Indeed, we can read headlines and see actions, which assure those who depend on plan X.  "We Bomb Yemen (Vacation Continues Unabated)" The vote is rigged to keep plan X the course that is elected, but that is no excuse, since we all enjoy what paltry returns we get from plan X.

Lack of imagination, lack of hope, leads to plan X.  Democracy thrives on lack of imagination, for it allows the few to look and around and decide what to steal.  That does not take much imagination. We did it in 1846, and by 1860 we were paying the price.  So let's see... 2002 plus 14 is 2016.  So whoever the next president is, expect real war.  We never learned our lesson.

If we only deregulated medicine, we could avoid war.  We'd have prosperity.

 Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.

Bookmark this post --- Email this post

Why Busted Pensions Will Not Be Bailed Out

Because they do not have to.  And when things get tight, they will change the topic with war.

"Unfunded Pension Liabilities" was the strike issue in the 1982 longshoreman contract negotiations for which I was on the management side.  I had to figure out what that was.  What we see today as a crisis was clear enough 30 years ago.  Then we could have done something, but we have a democracy, so we voted the problem downstream.

The Good Book says a man's sins are unto the 3rd or 4th generation, and no doubt that is true collectively as well.  Since we've piled up debt unto our great grandchildren, there is probably a metaphysical wall we have hit. We cannot take on more debt because we cannot find anyone who believes they can retrieve their loan from the fifth generation.

As a practial matter today, few understand pension money can be spent by those who control it before it is paid out.  In fact, they are obliged to, by way of investments.  They invest in things that go wrong for bad economic policy.  Detroit is bust, and a bankruptcy court will be telling those retirees depending on $2100 a month that, sorry, there is no more money.  Cities who look good today are only rosy due to a false economy based on a bubble stock market.  That too will pop.

It will be incremental, and a combination of things, but in time it will either be whittled down to no money, or $2100 will get you a loaf of bread.   It is already happening, look at the oldsters who are on fixed incomes and seeing low interest rates nail their incomes.

What we need is a renaissance in business to grow us out of this mess.  But that requires freedom, deregulating the producers.  Instead we are being treated to a doubling down on security theatre today.  "It's really, really scary out there.... something really really bad can happen!"

OK, it's your job to deal with it, not talk it to death.  Deal with it.  (Update: tired of waiting, the USA is the first to start throwing bombs.)

But it is all nonsense, make work for people who want an exciting sinecure in the theatre.  Do note the military uses the very term "theatre of operations."  The liberal idea of solving problems that do not exist finds its full flower in the G W O T !  By addressing problems that do not exist, it is not possible that the job will ever be finished, so your employment is never in doubt.

In the meantime, those unfortunate souls who drank the work 20 years, vacation for 40, kool aid will find life hard indeed.  They are in a funny position: their grandchildren will have to go to war to steal enough for the retirees to enjoy a vacation.

There is an alternative.  Deregulate banking.  Medicine.  Education.  Even just one thing, that would do it.  But no, we have the Global War On Terror!  Who needs to actually produce something?

Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.

Bookmark this post --- Email this post

Rabbi Daniel Lapin's Online Money Course

I've recommended Rabbi Lapin's books elsewhere, and this free four part video series look pretty good.  The first installment is orientation, and frankly fair warning, as he sets up what is to follow.

Of course since his advice is grounded in the Bible, he has to address the agnostics.  For a minute or so it sounds like he is pandering to the "prosperity theology" Christian preacher men who say "Jesus wants you rich, send me money."  But he beings them in without scaring them away.  He is very good at pedagogy.

I am not qualified to speak from the religious side, but it is gratifying to see he emphasizes the same point I do, and that is you make business by serving others.

I've read some of his other books, and they are all good.    Now I do not agree with everything he has to say, but he is always interesting.  Lapin is controversial within the Jewish community, and I am a little bit surprised to hear him described as "orthodox" when at best I though he was conservative.  Maybe he has stepped up his game.  It has always seemed to me, if you are going to be religious, you ought to be radical about it.

Update:  video two seemed to be more orientation, and now video three is out which seems to be devoted to praising the good Rabbi.  Otherwise content free.  I think video four needs to pay off.  I hope this was not just a long advertisement.

In video three he emphasizes the problem of people who think money or making money is evil.  Hmmm...  that is not such a large group I think, except for those who have sinecures handing out welfare payments, and I doubt any of them will ever care to view the Rabbi's videos.

The other thing is he has people testifying how the Rabbi's teaching led them to wealth.  Hmmm...  I never mention "getting rich"or any such variant in any of my courses, books, headlines, etc, because I never promise that.  People will be successful on their own, I can only save people time and money getting to where they are going anyway.  Then there is the problem that business is about lifestyle, not money.  Not that money is evil, it is just profit is just another business expense, what is left over after you pay the business bills.

Second Update:  I've watched all four.  Turns out it is an elaborate pitch for a paid program he runs.  AS one who runs programs, the series was interesting.  Not interested otherwise....

Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.

Bookmark this post --- Email this post

No Recovery Without Falling Prices

As long as housing and stock prices are rising, you can know for certain the economy is getting worse.  A free market, where prosperity is growing, is indicated by one single signal: falling prices.

The Government policy is to reward certain segments by rising prices relative to other segments.  It has gotten out of hand, and now we are in an economic mess.

The powers thet be know that prices (and wages, which is the price of labor) must fall for improvement, but they thing they can prescribe it.

IMF Proposes Spain Reduce Wages by 10% in Two Years

Via Google translate, La Vanguardia reports IMF Proposes Spain Reduce Wages by 10% in Two Years 
Read more at http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/#ZU32i1lTVx5YFef5.99 

Good luck with that.

Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.

Bookmark this post --- Email this post

Free Trade In Wine

When the USA was formed, it was to be thirteen countries with a weak federal govt representing it collectively to the world.  That was hijacked immediately by Hamilton and his crew, but to this day we talk Jeffersonian freedom back legislate Hamiltonian mercantilism.

One fundamental point in the Constitution was free trade among the states. We make "free trade" agreements around the world.  But we do not have free trade in wine in USA.  Small businesses fought a battle against this and won a small victory in the Supreme Court, Granholm v Heald, 2005.

Now comes a study that tells us that what limited freedom was effected by that ruling, wine sales jumped 75% for small wineries.  Good right?

Not by those who study such things.  How can this be bad?  Why, less taxes are collected.  You see, we exist to pay taxes.

Based on the model, the interstate sale of wine in the United States rose from 6.2 percent of the market to about 10.4 percent. The evidence presented in the interstate demand model used in this analysis confirms declining tax revenue in opposition to the Court’s conclusions.

Never mind business got better for small wineries.  And never mind big wineries pay less taxes than small wineries.  And never mind the rules are written by the big wineries.  Academic studies paid for by taxpayers have as their reference point tax collection.

Never mind Hong Kong cut taxes on wine to zero and in four years became the world center of wine trade.  The difference is in Hong Kong the State does not exist for state's sake.

 Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.

Bookmark this post --- Email this post

Terror Attack Imminent!

Just when we were getting tired of Security Theatre, al-qaeda plans a major attack!  All the anti-Freedom senators are astonished at the epic nature of the plans!  What started as just a threat to embassies in Moslem countries is now a World Wide Threat!  Even in the "Homeland!"

Können Sie sich vorstellen, was geschehen wäre, wenn diese Drohung nicht auftauchen wollte haben? Verstehst du?!

Who cares if this is just made up for budget reasons!  If it were a real attack, why not just deal with it?!  Who cares if this is a fake attack!? Maybe it is a real one they will let get through, like Boston, or Benghazi, or 9-11!  We have no role, except to be terrified!  And to keep forking over money for security theatre!

Why, without this timely change of topic we may have cut back some budgets on the spitzel-regime!  We can thank our lucky stars that al-qaeda is now on steroids after Benghazi!  Otherwise, no threat, no waste of money!  No cutbacks on freedom!

What we need is some sort of outward sign of our inward terror!   That would prove to the powers that be that we are sincere!  Look at North Korea.  People there act like they believe, see how they cry when a leader dies!

 But that takes too long! We Americans are better than that! We need some sort of quick signal we believe, and care! How about we just wet our pants?

Yes, let's show our leaders we believe!   Let's wet our pants!















Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.

Bookmark this post --- Email this post

How to Read the HTS or HS

Here is a helpful online tutorial on how to read the Harmonized Tariff Schedules of the United States, which I call the HTS, but some call the HS.  The HTS is an identification system with numbers associated with descriptions of items imported into the USA.  Anything you declare to customs must have the HTS number, and for exporting as well, although that number is called the Schedule B number.  Anyway, here you go:

http://www.usitc.gov/elearning/hts/menu/

Before you actually look for a HTS number, it is sometimes useful to go to USCustoms online and check out previous rulings by customs on items, your item, and see what you can learn.

http://rulings.cbp.gov/

Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.

Bookmark this post --- Email this post

American Defector Snowden

While the very best politicians we have to offer are whoremongers and perverts who send pictures of their genitalia out for review (Spitzer and Weiner) the Chinese crack down on boys being boys...

The Shanghai Higher People's Court has identified two officials implicated in the scandal as Chen Xueming and Zhao Minghua, chief and deputy chief of the court's No. 1 civil court, respectively. It also pledged a thorough investigation and subsequent harsh punishment if the allegations are true.

Any other politician in USA simply has not been caught yet.  This is why none can stand up to the surveillance state, because everyone of them is compromised.  Except Rand Paul, who was the sole dissenting vote on Comey for FBI director.

Now, I am not advocating harsh punishment, but do we have to insist on being a ridiculous people?  Is there no point where we say "enough" and take back our power?

People are actually defecting from the USA, as is the case with Snowden.  Sigh.

Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.

Bookmark this post --- Email this post

Patent Chaos: Apple Banned in USA by Samsung

The throw-away lines in the USConstitution regarding patents were intended to find the right note in prescriptive law providing for the maximum benefit to society.  Never about power or personal wealth.
The law is supposed to bring order to society.  The patent laws bring only chaos.

Samsung, having lost a patent case with Apple, in turn got a ruling forbidding Apple from importing things upon which Apple was infringing on Samsung.  Turnaround is fair play.

Susan Kohn Ross, a partner at the law firm Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp, said she was surprised the Obama administration stepped in on the case. Usually, such reviews turn on whether a patent in a case was really infringed, rather than concerns about the kinds of issues laid out in government policy statements.
Either way, this blow to Samsung likely won't have much impact in the bargaining room with Apple, she said. ITC decisions typically don't have as much of an impact in setting legal precedents as rulings in federal courts.
Samsung cannot appeal the veto, but it can continue to press its own court cases against Apple. "Does it in any way end the dispute? No," Ms. Ross said.

But wait, this is USA, so the rules only apply to USA, not to anyone else.  So the president intervenes and overturns the fair play for Samsung.

There are very many reasons why every day more and more people around the world come to hate Americans.  Here is a good example of why.  We do not play fair.

Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.

Bookmark this post --- Email this post