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Signs Of The Time, Part 9

You’ve got to hand it to J.G. Wentworth. As cheesy as their commercials may be— they’re catchy. Even if they send the wrong message sometimes…

A couple of weeks ago, my girlfriend’s cousin put on a birthday party for her son Robbie, who turned 5-years-old. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend. However, I was told that in one of his birthday cards little Robbie received a $2 bill. Seeing that Robbie was still opening his cards and presents, Robbie’s dad took the $2 bill away and told the birthday boy he would hold onto the money for safekeeping. Furious, Robbie screamed out:

“It’s MY money, and I want it NOW!!!”

Somehow, I don’t think Robbie’s parents are big fans of J.G. Wentworth right now…

Signs Of The Time, Part 7

As Wall Street flees from precious metals, I noticed the following message today on the home page of the American Precious Metals Exchange (APMEX) website:

Dear Valued Customer,

Due to the OVERWHELMING demand for precious metals, our online ordering system has been unable to keep up with our customers’ needs. We have had to disable the APMEX ordering system to allow us ample time to upgrade our site to accommodate the increased demand. We apologize for this temporary problem. In the mean time, we will be accepting telephone orders for the following items only as we have them available:

• 1 ounce Gold American Eagles
• 1 ounce Gold Canadian Maple Leafs
• 1 Ounce Gold Krugerrands
• 100 oz Silver Bars
• Misc Generic .999 Fine Silver
• 90% Coin Silver

During this time, we will have a minimum order of $5,000. We regret we have had to make this drastic change to our ordering process and rest assured, we are working expeditiously to correct the problem. As soon as we have our new site up and running, we will notify you via e-mail when you can again place orders online.

You may contact us during normal business hours Monday – Friday 7:30 am – 4:00 pm cst. (800) 375-9006

If you have existing orders with us, we have in-stock all items needed to fulfill your orders and are shipping them as scheduled. Once our new site is functional, we will be able to activate our complete inventory line again.

Respectfully,
Scott Thomas
President & CEO

P.S. We are actively looking for new bullion inventory to purchase. If you have items that total $2,500 or more and are interested in selling, please call our trading offices at the number listed above. We are paying strong numbers for ALL Precious Metals!

Think Main Street knows something that Wall Street doesn’t?

Signs Of The Time, Part 6

Do any of you watch Jim Cramer’s “Mad Money” show on CNBC? Jeff Poor (yes, that’s his real name) of the Business & Media Institute had an interesting story today about a recent inquiry to the television personality regarding a particular investment bank in the headlines. Poor wrote:

But, on March 11, Cramer told an e-mailer not to sell the beleaguered investment bank’s stock on his show’s Web site:

“Dear Jim: Should I be worried about Bear Stearns in terms of liquidity and get my money out of there? –Peter
Cramer says: “No! No! No! Bear Stearns is not in trouble. If anything, they’re more likely to be taken over. Don’t move your money from Bear.”

Poor added:

On Jan. 17, 2007, Bear was trading at its high of $171.51 a share. Since then, it has been racked by the mortgage turmoil. On March 11, when Cramer posted the e-mail and his response, the stock closed at $62.97. As of 10:00 a.m. on March 17, the stock was trading at $3.72 a share.

The stock ended the trading day Monday at $4.81 a share.

Source:

“Oops – CNBC’s Cramer Said ‘Don’t Move’ From Bear a Week Before Collapse”
Jeff Poor
Business & Media Institute, March 17, 2008

Signs Of The Time, Part 5

Move over baseball. Suing is now the national pastime. And it’s getting more ridiculous as personal accountability becomes increasingly endangered in America. Consider the following from MarketWatch this morning:

Ex-lawyer sues casinos over gambling compulsion

TEL AVIV (MarketWatch) - A former lawyer and media commentator who lost nearly $1 million from gambling is claiming in a lawsuit that the casinos at which she played had a duty to notice her compulsion and to stop her, the Associated Press reported.

Arelia Margarita Taveras filed a $20 million racketeering suit in U.S. District Court in New Jersey. The suit names six casinos in New Jersey and one in Las Vegas as defendants.

Taveras told AP that the casinos’ staffers saw her gambling for days without eating or sleeping and that “they had a duty of care to me.”

The casinos deny that they did anything wrong. AP reported that the casinos responded to the lawsuit by saying that Taveras caused her own problems.

Attorneys told AP that Taveras, a New Yorker who now works at a call center in Minnesota, would have a difficult time proving her allegations…

Not a day goes by that I don’t hear of another frivolous lawsuit, it seems. For those who routinely follow the news, you’d think there was something else more headline-worthy? Is it me, or does the traditional media just completely reek of tabloid journalism? Apparently, it’s not me. According to a nationwide Harris Poll of 2,302 U.S. adults surveyed online between January 15 and 22, 2008, over half of Americans (54%) say they tend not to trust the media, with only 30% tending to trust the press. Just under half of Americans (46%) say they do not trust television, while one-third (36%) do trust them. Internet news and information sites did better, as 41% of Americans trust them while just one-third (34%) tend not to trust them. Harris Interactive found that radio tends to do best among Americans as 44% say they tend to trust it and one-third (32%) tend not to trust the medium.

Regardless, the days of America as THE litigious society (the United States has 70% of the world’s lawyers, yet only 5% of its population) may be coming to an end, if only for the reason that there may not be any law schools left. Not really, but, consider this story from Vesna Jaksic for The National Law Journal back on December 18, 2007. In “Don’t Like Your Grade? Sue Your Law School,” Jaksic writes:

Call it practical training.

Unhappy with their exam grades, their law schools’ readmission policies and even administrators’ conduct, a number of law students have sued their law schools in recent months.

A group of students filed a $120 million class action against the American Justice School of Law in Paducah, Ky., on Nov. 17, citing allegations that include tax fraud, false representation to the American Bar Association, racketeering, scheming to defraud students and obstruction of justice…

Late last month, Adam Key, a second-year law student, sued Regent University School of Law, a private Christian school in Virginia Beach, Va., claiming violations of his right to free speech and religion after getting expelled for posting a critique in an online university forum…

On Nov. 14, John Valente, a second-year student at University of Dayton School of Law in Ohio, filed a complaint against his school, citing negligence in dealing with exam software…

Whatever the reason, the suits are piling up — and law schools are busy dealing with them.

Considering the applicable experience these law students are gaining from their suits, do you think they’ll note this on their resumes?

Sources:

“Ex-lawyer sues casinos over gambling compulsion”
MarketWatch, March 9, 2008

“Don’t Like Your Grade? Sue Your Law School”
Vesna Jaksic
The National Law Journal, December 18, 2007

Signs Of The Time, Part 4

“The only thing more expensive than education is ignorance.”

-Benjamin Franklin (Founding Father. 1706-1790)

Americans on the street are interviewed. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry while watching the video from YouTube.

“Were we even in the Vietnam War?”

Signs Of The Time, Part 3

While pulling up research for an earlier post, I came across the following in MarketWatch from February 5. Thomas Kostigen, in “The inheritance bust: Big boomer windfall not materializing the way many planned,” noted that according to a new Consumer Wealth research report by Tiburon Strategic Advisors:

Many people expect to get pensions but, curiously, don’t have them.

“Consumers are counting on income from pensions but won’t receive it; 62% of consumers expect to receive pensions when they retire, however only 41% say they or their spouses are currently covered by a pension,” Tiburon says. “This provides a very strange and worrisome gap because it presents a 21% gap which represents people that are counting on a pension, but do not believe they or their spouses have one.”

I’ve heard this one before. So, even though only 41% of American workers or their spouses are currently covered by a pension, 62% expect to receive pensions when they retire. As Mr. Hand from the movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High would say, “What are you, people? On dope?” This is even more disturbing when you take into account that in the United States today, traditional pensions are going by the wayside.

Aloha, Mr. Hand!

Signs Of The Time, Part 2

I once read about a survey which showed 90% of managers at one company felt their ability to communicate with subordinates was “exceptional.” Ironically, the same poll revealed 90% of employees said management needed significant work on improving their communication skills. But, what good is communication if you don’t trust what’s being said? According to the December 17 issue of BusinessWeek, “dissembling” is on the rise in the workplace, as a new survey by the non-profit Ethics Resource Center found. “Dissembling” is basically the polite, business way of saying “lying.” According to the non-profit group, 25% of nearly 2,000 American employees said they observed co-workers lying to customers, suppliers, other workers, and the public. This is up from 19% in 2005.

The survey showed that dissembling most often took place in the following industries:
• Hospitality/Food (where 34% of employees saw lying taking place)
• Arts/Entertainment/Recreation (34%)
• Wholesalers (32%)

According to the center’s president, Patricia Harned, too much emphasis is being placed on compliance matters (due to the Enron debacle), and not enough attention is being focused on building cultures where lying isn’t tolerated.

Signs Of The Time, Part 1

In trying to determine the direction of the U.S. economy, practitioners of the “dismal science” would argue that we should focus primarily on the empirical data at hand. Yet, can we also find clues as to where we are heading from what’s going on around us in our daily lives? Are there things that you’ve seen or heard that just scream “excess!” and lead you to believe that we’re at some tipping point? For example, in the late nineties I remember hearing how employers, forced to compete against one another in a sizzling job market, were trying to lure new college graduates with outrageous salaries, stock plans, gym memberships, VIP parking, the works. I had a pretty good idea this particular situation wouldn’t last. As a matter of fact, only a few years later I was reading about laid-off executives flipping burgers at local fast-food joints.

Consider the following story from the January 28 issue of Time. In “Your Own Personal Paparazzi,” Jeninne Lee-St. John talked about how regular people have been paying up to $1,500 a day for the privilege of having their own “paparazzi” follow them around. Lee-St. John detailed how one couple in Austin, Texas, hired some of these freelancers to follow them around one night. Apparently, the paparazzi were so convincing in their pursuit of the couple that random passerbys started taking photos of the couple with their camera phones and asking who they were. I know… let the sheeple comments begin.

In another instance, a 29-year-old Chicago man and his friends hired a paparazzo to accompany them as they went bar-hopping for the man’s birthday. To their surprise, the guys were able to avoid the lines at some of the clubs. “People thought, these guys are important people,” said the birthday boy.

A number of these personal paparazzi companies are popping up in cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and even across the pond in the United Kingdom. Lee-St. John wrote:

The trend is driven by the twin obsessions with chronicling one’s life and experiencing fame. “We live in a culture where if it’s not documented, it doesn’t exist,” says Josh Gamson, a University of San Francisco professor of sociology who studies culture and mass media. “And if you don’t have people asking who you are, you’re nobody.”

I don’t know about you, but it sounds more like an inferiority complex to me…