Jobs Report: Looks Encouraging To Me!

When I read...

More than 56 million women were not of the U.S. labor force last month, according to new government data released Friday. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that 56,647,000 women, ages 16 and older during the month of September were neither employed nor had made specific efforts to find work in the past four weeks.

and see this

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/susan-jones/record-94610000-americans-not-labor-force-participation-rate-lowest-38

with this comment...

In other disappointing news, the economy added only 142,000 jobs in September, well below economists' expectations, but the unemployment rate remained at 5.1 percent, where it was in August.

I say, things are looking up.    That chart goes form 1948 to 2015.   From 1948 to 1970 all is within a point a a half range, 58.5 to 60.  The comes where very economic graph goes screwy, when Nixon took us (and the world) of the gold standard lite.  Now banks could lend nothing at interest, and people could borrow and charge it off to future generations.  (It is coming to an end because God said He will not allow sins to go past the fourth generation, and we are there.)

That graph represent data that has been jiggered countless times over the years, so each point plotted plots a new definition.  It sort of gives us a picture, but does not explain just how evil the picture is.

There has to be some promise to repay to back no assets to lend so women in the workforce was an astonishing development in the 1970s.  (A mother working?!  Something was very, very wrong...)

We have had a poverty draft into the military for 40 years and a poverty draft of women into the workplace for 50 years.  So THAT economy is dying out.  If it means women who want to stay home and raise kids can do so, then great!  But in any event, THEIR economy, AN economy is dying before our eyes, but not THE economy, certainly not MY economy.  I see nothing but peace and prosperity far and wide.  Now, certainly there will be hundreds of millions fighting over literally scraps, but that has nothing to do with me.  I'll drive past them, and their chosen fates.

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Specialty Still Fine

Good business is still growing...

"National import volumes and prices have decreased in China compared to last year. This is caused by a weakening Yuan and unstable market conditions. However, the fruit import and export market will continue to grow”.

In deflation, as costs drop faster than prices, you'll see dealers charging less and less yet their profits widening, with both the seller and the buyer ever happier at the circumstances.  It is contrary to what we've experienced the last forty years, but wrap your brain around it, for it is where we are going.

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Online Import Export Courses Now!

If you look at the upper right of this blog page, you'll find links to two online small business international trade start-up courses.  Each is live online, and starts next week. These courses are based on real-world experience taught by me, a practicing professional.  They are highly rated by students for content, candor and humor.

You may enroll through any of dozens of schools, but the courses are strictly non-credit.  Decide if you want an general start-up course,

http://seattleteacherscollege.net/tradworinnin.html

or a specific 'exporting food" course...

http://seattleteacherscollege.net/exfoassmbu.html

Either way, no need to pay now, you'll be billed for the course.

If you need to start up your business now, there is no more direct method than is laid out in my courses.  Feel free to email me with any questions.

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Chinese & Real Estate: It IS Monopoly Money

Just like?  No, it is monopoly money.  There is nothing to back the credit represented in currency, or the tallies behind the credit cards.  or if there is, it is pennies on the dollar.  One is wise to trade tallies for diamonds.  More risky to do so for property, since at the coming reckoning, the taxes will put unhappy faces on owners of all sorts of property: real estate, pensions, and paychecks.

“They arrive with this endless stream of money without working or earning it. It’s just Monopoly money to them,” says Gotham Dream Cars’ Rob Ferretti of Chinese customers who come to him in search of an exotic ride. They lease cars like the $397,000 Maybach 57S for $2,200 a day. Color-wise, “They love these light blues,” Ferretti says. They’re even particular about the car’s VIN number: They like when it has as many eights in it as possible.

They?  What do you think USA has done around the world the last 70 years?  The Chinese are just beating us at our own game.  Their credit is better.  For now.

Being self-employed, you don't really need much of a paycheck, since the business is the lifestyle.

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New American Poverty Part Two

Just like food overprocessed can become a slow poison, so is media-mediated life a slow poison.  I know life before the internet, life before before beepers, and even before telephone answering machines.  I don't know life before television or radio, but I hear from those who did that these new devices overall were no net positive.

But!  All of this has made communication and research faster and cheaper, no mean feat.  If you have something worth saying or researching, this is good.  If you are competitive, this is essential.

But!  Almost no one has anything worth saying to as wide an audience as the 'net avails, and if one is competitive, one competes on the same platform, so whether high tech is the answering machine or the predictive dialer, the better competitor wins.

And nothing has changed in competition: it is still the sales/pro dev process of observation - problem - solution - form hypothesis - test hypothesis - observation - ad infinitem.  Excelsior!  (I wonder why old-school packing material was called "excelsior"?  Just a brand name, or celebrating a shipment, which is legally a sale?)

There is a false economy, F I R E, that is about to come down.  Taxpayers credit allotted to General Motors to subsidy-advertise taxpayer subsidized Camaros on not-marked-to-market (yet pension-funded) Gawker is AN economy, but not THE economy.  If you want to see A economy, a most basic one, visit the Amish who pay no social security taxes, Obamacare exempt, war-exempt, compulsory school exempt, etc.  Credit is king there, not money.  (But they do have money!)

From that austere simplicity, there are countless variations.  And many complexities can be added, but the one economy killer is usury, charging a fee for a charitable event, a loan.  (All loans are charity, there is no such legitimate event as a "business loan.")

As THIS economy comes a tumblin' down, as USA's empty credit stretches to the limit of the 4th generation out, there is a guide to navigating the shoals safely.  Just neither pay nor accept interest (usury, fees at any rate for any amount for any duration.)  There are no economic events that require fee-based loans, none for which there is not a better alternative, one in which the fraud of "selling" something which does not exist is not central.

It is a lot harder than you think, but you'll see how insidious it is.  If you can qualify as a UBER driver (not hard) you are guaranteed a car no more than 4 years old, off select dealer lots.  No one gets turned down for bad credit.  Indeed, a system already being gamed by people with bad credit, who get UBER-approved and then get a new car, but decline to actually drive for UBER.

With usury, there is money to be made all around, off those who do decide to drive.  For those who fail, well, a brief joy ride.

it all gets down to your definition of wealth: is it personal accumulation?  Or is wealth to what degree what array of goods and services are accessible to what range of people with their own earnings?

A country where 47% of the people cannot feed themselves, depend on handouts, is not a wealthy country.  A system that crowds out those willing to work and viable small businesses with despoiling mal-credit. A country that has a poverty draft. That is an impoverished country.  U S A ! U S A ! U S A !

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The New American Poverty

While you were staring at your display, or more recently, working facebook, USA made war on various countries and destabilized vast swathes of the world.  Now ten to twenty years into this our economy is teetering, and 15 USA companies paid no taxes on 23 billion in profits.  Taxes are for chumps.

Those devices have crowded out aspirations.  Where once people wanted personal contact, nice things, pleasant surroundings, now they have their noses into a talkie-hearie voodoo box (or whatever they are called) of some sort, oblivious to the fact there is more, and better.

The media-mediated life is ephemeral, and when the USA can no longer get credit to finance it, it will come tumbling down.  So what if you know what everyone is doing, if they are not doing anything.  We can see through your walls!  Playing video games.  wow.

Anyway, in a country of 350 million, it only takes five or six million to make a separate economy thrive.  heck, the Amish do it with only several dozen thousands.  It's too bad, seeing so many deny the rest of us the good of their creativity.

Start your business, it is the most revolutionary act you can make.

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The Belt and Road Freight Trade Index

Nice work Bush, Cheney, Rumsfled, Clinton and your neocon front men...  you've isolated USA from the rest of the world.  

The indices, with January 2015 used as the base period, will be released on the last Monday of every month.

The Belt and Road Freight Trade Index (SRFTI), is designed to track the volume and value of international trade between China and 66 countries along the Belt and Road, which are in Asia, North Africa, Europe, and Oceania, a statement of SSE said.

The Maritime Silk Road Freight Index (MSRFI), tracks the shipping freight rates of imported and exported containerised cargoes, imported dry bulk cargoes, and imported crude oil.

Your isolating policies of war, and more war have made the rest of the world look elsewhere to trade.

Pope John Paul II (now Saint John Paul) said evil government is like a cloud, a weather pattern, that moves from one place to another, slowly.  Russia, China, Eastern Europe, now it seems to be settling in on North America.  Central Asia is brightening.

And next election our choices will be....  ummm... Bush and Clinton.

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Trade Show Expense Budget

Your success depends on trade shows, for they are the most efficient test of your hypothesis.  Yet, they need not be too expensive to attend.  Where most others are forking over $20,000 for a show, you can have your own booth all-in for $8000, or share one for $2000, or get a sales rep and pay nothing.  I have a .pdf decision tree on this, and feel free to email me for that.  Here is an excellent and comprehensive list of trade-show related expenses, for which to budget.

There is much more to a comprehensive trade show exhibit budget than you’d expect. In order to stay within budget and avoid the potential cost overruns, let’s take a closer look at some line items that must be considered in a well-planned trade show budget: 

What I like about this list is since it is so thorough, you can wittingly decide what not to spend, and then decide how to cover that decided lack.

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Small Business International Trade Start-Up, Portland OR

Portland Community College is offering an all-day intensive seminar on small business international trade start-up, October 10 from 9am-5pm.

This is your chance to jump-start your business with email follow-up after the live class at no charge.  Enroll at the link above now or email me for more information.

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Cal Poly - San Luis Obispo Seminar

If you need to start an international trade company, you'll find an all day intensive course half-way between Los Angeles and San Francisco (either way).

This is the highly-rated for content and humor seminar with email follow-up.

eMail me with any questions, or enroll now here...

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Is The Drug Company Greed New?

A doctor working 500 years ago was complaining about greedy drug companies:

Among his ‘heretical’ actions were his opposition to the revered Galeno-Arabic system, the burning of Avicenna’s writings in a public square, and his attack on the greed of apothecaries
.
There is ever a simple solution: deregulate the drug companies, delegitimize them.  In a free market none of their depredations can maintain.

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ISIS and Money

States adapt malicious ideas and denigrate good ideas.  Sometimes it gets convoluted...  let Tyler Durden explain.

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Free "Money" and Productivity

If you are say 50 and unemployed, you can always work the disability scam, pick up easy money by having a dentist take an impression of your teeth, mark that "before" the accident, and then have th same dentist grind down your teeth slightly, take another impression, and mark it "after" the accident.  What accident?  Doesn't matter, just fall to the floor at work and claim to be in pain.  Free money for life.

You have to find the right dentist, but it's not hard if you go to a larger city.

Sound desperate?  The powers that be are already wrecking your future, whether you know it or not.

Gross underscored that it’s not just insurance companies and giant pension funds that are suffering from low interest rates. Investors aren’t getting the 8 percent to 10 percent returns they counted on to pay for education, health care, retirement or vacation.
“Mainstream America with their 401(k)s are in a similar pickle,” he wrote. “They are not so much in a pickle barrel as they are on a revolving spit, being slowly cooked alive while central bankers focus on their Taylor models and fight non-existent inflation,” Gross said, referring to a rule named for Stanford University economist John Taylor.

Either you are now experiencing lack of income because you presently draw from investments, or you will in the future, you just don't know it yet, since you are in a "plan."

The reason I know the scam above is because I've talked to the doctors who evaluate the claims.  They know the scams, but right now, since "money" (if defined incorrectly) is free, no one cares that anyone is scamming.  It doesn't hurt the bankers, so no one cares.

When someone cares, then those scams dry up.  Tough looking for work when your resume says "on disability."

Better start your own business now.

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Go For OTB - Open to Buy

So the “bad news” is shipping and trucking prices are falling as less is being shipped.  Bad for whom?  Not bad for we at the small business level who compete on design, not on price.

Sooner or later, businesses will try to whittle down their inventories, either by selling more or by cutting orders – and the first just isn’t happening to the extent needed.

The bad news hammers Walmart and big business and those holding stock therein (your pension).  Not that shiiping costs ever was much of a factor in international trade, that is to say, the component cost of freight is not enough to make any difference in the final price even if shipping swing 20-30% of cost over time.  Freight at $6.50 instead of $5.00 on a $100 item is no big deal.

The big deal is people are not as much buying the junk they were before.  The good news is the retailers big question is what is next?  So they need to test new ideas.  This is wonderful for we at the snall business level, for we can offer those fast and furious, and we can afford to fail fast fail early.

Who cares if buyers are cutting back on their purchases.  I’d cut back on junk not selling too.  Any buyer smart enough to cut back heading inot this Christmas season, by say 20% of a million, or $200,000 is going to hurt big importers/manufacturers, suppliers, of more commodity items.

On the other hand, those same buyers will have extra OTB to search and lern new trending items, that means money to test your ideas.

CAUTION: If any well-established firm places a large order with you on a new item, refuse it!  They know they are going out of business. They are making you a unsecured creditor on whatever dollar amount you ship them.  They have zero intention of paying you, and if they can double their money, or merely sell your goods 5 cents on the dollar, they don’t care, they will not pay you.  And you’ll come up with nothing.  Seen this 100 times.

Legitimate buyers will first ask “what is new?” (you) and next “What is your minimum order?” (your lcl moq fob.)  If your offer meets their OTB plan for new, you have a compelling case for them to buy.

Learn more about OTB here... know how buyers work so you can know how to get them to buy...  attck their buying plan

http://retailowner.com/Get-Quick-Answers/Open-to-Buy-Calculator

All this is covered in my classes, click the upper right links to some classes, or email me for more information.

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Welfare Queen Confident Her Checks Will Resume

Here a welfare queen says, "don't worry, be happy."

Boeing Co (BA.N) chairman Jim McNerney said on Thursday he believes the U.S. Export-Import Bank, which recently lost authorization to engage in new business, will be reauthorized.

There is no opposition in congress to ExIm Bank, only redesigning who gets what cut of the kickbacks.


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Why The Pope Is Correct

I am much informed by the Austrian School of Economics, and admire their ability to predict economic events, if not timing, and perform post-mortems.  They share the communists ability to get their facts straight.  They are dead wrong in usury, but no one has the whole picture.

I can understand when non-Catholics cannot fathom the point of view of the pope, such as a favorite author Thos. Sowell:

But there has also been a more ideological left. Where the Communists had their official newspaper, "The Daily Worker," there was also "The Catholic Worker" published by Dorothy Day.

but you see even honest economists like Sowell are given to cheap shots when addressing what the Pope has to say.  Sowell knows perfectly well that Dorothy Day was an anarchist, and an avowed enemy of communism, but he sneakily puts her in that camp.  Unfair.

Ryan McMaken is an Austrian economist and Roman Catholic and says this:

As with many ideologies and religions, political ideologues of every age attempt to take something that’s much bigger than their issue-of-the-day and force it into a mold that supports their current likes and desires for public policy X.

Quite true.  And the reverse is true, where a Pope addresses a large issue and ideologues try to denigrate and misrepresent what is said.  We see this much in libertarian and right wing circle's vis a vis this pope.

McMaken repeats Noonan's false claim that the church changed is teaching on usury, but on slavery, torture, etc, he is somewhat correct:  the church got around to forbidding that which it is was previously silent.

American Catholics are usually Roman Catholic, and tend to view Roman Catholicism as an American thing, without considering the fact the Pontiff also is addressing the Idi Amins and the Kim family and Marcos and Castros of the world, not only Americans.  When the church embraces Aquinas on just war, a social doctrine, anyone can make whatever they want of it, and they do.  Weigel, Neuhaus, Novak all claimed church teaching was behind the Bush family criminal invasions of the Middle East.  Never mind specific declarations of the pope to the contrary.

When a pope says to governments, we urge this, urge that, compare what is urged against what governments do.  There is no more powerful condemnation of governments than the gap between the right thing and the done thing.  This is why governments such as Kim's in North Korea and the bankers in USA so hate the Catholic Church.

If the pope talks "living wage" people will sputter "what about high school kids flipping burgers?"  Well, in a socio-political system, such as capitalism, in which usury is insinuated in the patterns and practices of the economy, and the resultant slavery is rampant, and MeDonalds can wipe out the countless family burger-joint businesses with ersatz credit, leaving families short of money. Perhaps there should not be a McDonalds at all.  McDonalds would not exist in a free market, and has it dawned on anyone except those versed in Church teaching on usury that at ZIRP McDonalds is dying?

Did we not at some point, during the roller coaster of centrally planned interest rates,  dwell at that natural rate of interest at which the Austrians claim all is well in the economy?  Like the stopped clock that is right two times a day, did the Austrians not have their time?

The Catechism of the Catholic Church is a teaching document (although the English language version had to be retranslated for some pretty tendentious assertions) and it is well worth having handy.

Another teaching document, the Compendium of Catholic Social Teaching I long avoided, for fear of the people who recommended it, the loopy "social justice' folk that lurk around churches and organize lunches.  I finally gave in and bought a copy, and I was astonished.  if you know how to read Catholic teaching, to my mind, it is far better than the Catechism itself.  The catechism explains the genesis of the church teachings, the Social Compendium gets to how to implement the teaching.

What you need to read is the ideas, and then work out the holistic solution.  The Social Compendium does not advocate getting rid of McDonalds, but it does advocate a free market, in which there would be no McDonalds.

Update:  The Bionic Mosquito excoriates the Pope for his address to congress.  It is a pretty good critique.  But it misses St Paul's note about praising your enemies and thus heap burning coals on their heads.  Mother Teresa also said very nice things about the nefarious, to the nefarious, publicly: the Marcos, the Clintons, the Duvaliers.  All were deposed or rendered impotent within months of her praises (the Clintons fell into Monicagate).    Give it a couple of months, and let's see where USA government is at...





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2nd Circuit Undermines Capitalistic Usury

Now, it is only a baby step, but that was not so hard, was it?  The second circuit court decided that ambulance chasers may not buy debts from banks and then gouge the bank's victims.  The Supreme Court has decided to let it stand.

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals’ May 22, 2015, decision in Madden v. Midland Funding, LLC held that a nonbank entity taking assignment of debts originated by a national bank is not entitled to protection under the National Bank Act (NBA) from state law usury claims. (Madden v. Midland Funding, LLC, No. 14-2131-cv, 2015 WL 2435657, at *1, *8 (2d Cir. May 22, 2015.)) The Second Circuit and the Southern District of New York both appear to have not considered the “Valid-When-Made Doctrine” – a longstanding principle of usury law that if a loan is not usurious when made, then it does not become usurious when assigned to another party.

Or maybe they did and decided 150 years of exploitation is enough, and are now in the process of delegitimizing usury.  Imagine that, courts doing good for the free market.

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Macau Trade Show Biz Down 20%

One of the games of the trade show business is to sell the "national pavilion."  In this all of the sellers from a nation gather in one expensive but highly subsidized booth.  The Show hosts clean up, and the exhibitors get huge subsidies so it seems like a win win except for the taxpayers and, one would assume, for the competitors who do not get the subsidies.

Well, two problems for those who take the subsidies:

1.  Consistently over the years,  one of the top three complaints of buyers is exhibitors in the conglomerated national booth are out of what would be their natural location in a trade show, making the appointment inconvenient for the buyer.  Further, given competition imperatives, having a country's buyers and sellers congregating leads to constraints not otherwise present.

2.  Yes, the subsidies can run an generous 50% rebate on all expenses, but 50% of $20,000 is $10,000, and you can stage an effective booth and travel etc for far cheaper than that on your own.

Governments have run out of credit, and have started cutting back.  Very bad news for those whose business model depends on such subsidies.  For those who never sought out the subsidies, it will not matter much one way or another.

Let the cuts begin.

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Ogilvy on Advertising

Advertising and promotion are so critical to a business, and never before has there been so much waste and nonsense in advertising, especially all of this "online, web and social media" hype.  Read what a fellow wrote in the early 1960s, and it will be your guide today.  This book will save you much, much time and money.




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