Hands up – I admit I am a techno-skeptic. I hate technology for the sake of technology, I want technology that actually benefits me and improves my life. Apple’s iPad – what’s the point of the iPad? You can’t connect it to your work network and it still doesn’t support Flash. Social media, what is the point of Social media? If I want to communicate with someone I’ll either ring them up on my (okay I’ve actually got a smartphone!) phone or call round and see them. But then along comes Google and they are reportedly taking social media ‘citations’ as part of their ranking algorithm so I am suddenly forced to start paying attention.
What is a Citation?, who cares – well I do now because I need to earn them apparently to move my business forward. I have been running my online business at Stinkyink.com for nearly ten years. In that time we have survived Google's Florida update and all the others through to Panda and managed to grow our business based on good old fashioned link building and website optimization, but now suddenly I have to start paying attention to something else.
Let’s be honest here, I run a commercial website selling ink – it’s not the sexiest product in the world and is difficult to make exciting. Most people actually positively resent buying ink cartridges because the perception is that they are poor value for money so to get positive social media ‘citations’ is always going to be a tough call. So, kicking and screaming I’ve been forced to pay attention to Twitter and Facebook. Do you know what, I have just realised that Twitter is a really useful tool for me, not necessarily for promoting my business or myself indeed, but by being careful about who I follow and building up a list of relevant follows over the past few months I am finding that I spend useful time learning things. My biggest frustration is tweeting and then nobody responding, do I live in a vacuum?
So Twitter for us is becoming a useful resource. Those words are a bit like saying ‘that cabbage was very nice’ not a sentence that I would normally utter! I see friends of mine with commercial sites, who tweet once every six weeks ‘Sale’ or ‘special offer’ and even I understand that is not the way to earn ‘citations’ or anything else worthwhile, you do have to engage with these mediums to get any benefit and that takes time and attention, if you don’t have that time then stick with the trusted SEO methods of link building and optimization.
Continued on the next pageIt's so simple, a child of four could understand -- but too difficult for Wall Street to get: High oil and high gas prices are BAD for consumers and business alike and bad for a struggling recovering economy.
Simple, right? No one needs an economics degree to understand that energy is the single most important input cost to more than 50% of manufacturing -- to processing food, for refrigeration, to making drugs and plastics and of course to all manner of transport; trains, planes, trucks. For you and me, we can't spend money with retailers that has already gone into our tanks to get us to work, or to heat our homes. Heck, we can't even keep the money we're spending on oil in this country, as it bleeds at a rate of $300 billion a year out of the US and into OPEC hands.
It's simple, and intuitive: Oil and the economy are at odds -- high oil prices equal a sluggish recovery, with less consumer spending, reduced hiring and slowed growth. Low oil prices free up capital for investment and jobs, for purchasing vacations and flat screens, for increased profits and optimistic forecasts.
But that's not how it works on Wall Street. Because of the investor and trading connections between oil and other asset classes, (that I describe in my book) , the correlation between oil and stocks -- the best indicator of economic health -- has been impossibly locked together for the last several years.
How stupid. We fight like crazy to avoid a depression, pour more than a trillion dollars into stimulus, bail out banks to ensure that credit will continue to flow, take on more debt than we've ever seen before and when finally we see some good results of increasing profits or some small unemployment improvements, we run into the oil wall.
Because oil has not so quietly been taking this recovery trip with us, eating the flesh of the recovery incentives, low interest rates and stimulus money and ratcheting up to bubblicious and economy destroying levels, reaching almost $120 a barrel in May.
Whoops, time to stop our recovery -- energy costs are too high now, almost all economists agree, people are buckling under the strain of $4 a gallon gas, corporate profit margins are getting eaten up, and domestic growth projections are revised downwards from 4%, to 3% to 2 1/2%.
People talk about double-dip recessions and unemployment stop improving. And guess what? The stock market goes down, losing most of its hard earned gains for the year.
And what are the economists saying is the silver lining in all this? That's right, as the markets fall, oil falls with it, giving the slim hope that maybe we can get this high price anchor off from around our necks, if only to start this silly game over again.
Crazy, right? Who doesn't see how crazy this is?
This Push-me Pullyu Doctor Doolittle beast of oil is just killing us. We've got to stop it.
My friend Jim Cramer suggested today that not everything deserves to be traded. He mentions oil in a passing way, but I'll do it much more directly: If we don't break this Wall Street blockade that oil trading has placed in front of our road to recovery, we'll just never get there.
My hope is fading. The CFTC, charged with trying to fix some of this, has been stopped in its tracks from regulatory action, is in fact fighting for its life with deep budget cuts being proposed at a time when its mandate and responsibilities are greater than ever.
All while one of the biggest roadblocks to economic recovery and success is so simple to see.
So easy, a child of four could see it -- while Wall Street clearly can't.
<b>News</b> International's Leadership Crisis - Gill Corkindale - Harvard <b>...</b>
Among the many shocking facts that have emerged from the News of the World hacking crisis, it is the revelations about News International's dysfunctional leadership and the NoW's brutal organizational culture that have ...
<b>News</b> International's Leadership Crisis - Gill Corkindale - Harvard <b>...</b>CREW Calls On Congress To Investigate <b>News</b> Corp. After Phone <b>...</b>
The watchdog group Citizens For Responsibility and Ethics in Washington is calling on Congress to investigate Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. for evidence that the company's sprawling phone hacking scandal reached the United ...
CREW Calls On Congress To Investigate <b>News</b> Corp. After Phone <b>...</b>Jon Stewart Tackles the <b>News</b> of the World Scandal
But before Stewart could expound on his point, correspondent John Oliver presented him with a recap of Rupert Murdoch's News of the World scandal--a friendly reminder that the British will always find a way to out-shame ...
Jon Stewart Tackles the <b>News</b> of the World Scandalprivate bobby ferguson
<b>News</b> International's Leadership Crisis - Gill Corkindale - Harvard <b>...</b>
Among the many shocking facts that have emerged from the News of the World hacking crisis, it is the revelations about News International's dysfunctional leadership and the NoW's brutal organizational culture that have ...
<b>News</b> International's Leadership Crisis - Gill Corkindale - Harvard <b>...</b>CREW Calls On Congress To Investigate <b>News</b> Corp. After Phone <b>...</b>
The watchdog group Citizens For Responsibility and Ethics in Washington is calling on Congress to investigate Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. for evidence that the company's sprawling phone hacking scandal reached the United ...
CREW Calls On Congress To Investigate <b>News</b> Corp. After Phone <b>...</b>Jon Stewart Tackles the <b>News</b> of the World Scandal
But before Stewart could expound on his point, correspondent John Oliver presented him with a recap of Rupert Murdoch's News of the World scandal--a friendly reminder that the British will always find a way to out-shame ...
Jon Stewart Tackles the <b>News</b> of the World ScandalHands up – I admit I am a techno-skeptic. I hate technology for the sake of technology, I want technology that actually benefits me and improves my life. Apple’s iPad – what’s the point of the iPad? You can’t connect it to your work network and it still doesn’t support Flash. Social media, what is the point of Social media? If I want to communicate with someone I’ll either ring them up on my (okay I’ve actually got a smartphone!) phone or call round and see them. But then along comes Google and they are reportedly taking social media ‘citations’ as part of their ranking algorithm so I am suddenly forced to start paying attention.
What is a Citation?, who cares – well I do now because I need to earn them apparently to move my business forward. I have been running my online business at Stinkyink.com for nearly ten years. In that time we have survived Google's Florida update and all the others through to Panda and managed to grow our business based on good old fashioned link building and website optimization, but now suddenly I have to start paying attention to something else.
Let’s be honest here, I run a commercial website selling ink – it’s not the sexiest product in the world and is difficult to make exciting. Most people actually positively resent buying ink cartridges because the perception is that they are poor value for money so to get positive social media ‘citations’ is always going to be a tough call. So, kicking and screaming I’ve been forced to pay attention to Twitter and Facebook. Do you know what, I have just realised that Twitter is a really useful tool for me, not necessarily for promoting my business or myself indeed, but by being careful about who I follow and building up a list of relevant follows over the past few months I am finding that I spend useful time learning things. My biggest frustration is tweeting and then nobody responding, do I live in a vacuum?
So Twitter for us is becoming a useful resource. Those words are a bit like saying ‘that cabbage was very nice’ not a sentence that I would normally utter! I see friends of mine with commercial sites, who tweet once every six weeks ‘Sale’ or ‘special offer’ and even I understand that is not the way to earn ‘citations’ or anything else worthwhile, you do have to engage with these mediums to get any benefit and that takes time and attention, if you don’t have that time then stick with the trusted SEO methods of link building and optimization.
Continued on the next pageIt's so simple, a child of four could understand -- but too difficult for Wall Street to get: High oil and high gas prices are BAD for consumers and business alike and bad for a struggling recovering economy.
Simple, right? No one needs an economics degree to understand that energy is the single most important input cost to more than 50% of manufacturing -- to processing food, for refrigeration, to making drugs and plastics and of course to all manner of transport; trains, planes, trucks. For you and me, we can't spend money with retailers that has already gone into our tanks to get us to work, or to heat our homes. Heck, we can't even keep the money we're spending on oil in this country, as it bleeds at a rate of $300 billion a year out of the US and into OPEC hands.
It's simple, and intuitive: Oil and the economy are at odds -- high oil prices equal a sluggish recovery, with less consumer spending, reduced hiring and slowed growth. Low oil prices free up capital for investment and jobs, for purchasing vacations and flat screens, for increased profits and optimistic forecasts.
But that's not how it works on Wall Street. Because of the investor and trading connections between oil and other asset classes, (that I describe in my book) , the correlation between oil and stocks -- the best indicator of economic health -- has been impossibly locked together for the last several years.
How stupid. We fight like crazy to avoid a depression, pour more than a trillion dollars into stimulus, bail out banks to ensure that credit will continue to flow, take on more debt than we've ever seen before and when finally we see some good results of increasing profits or some small unemployment improvements, we run into the oil wall.
Because oil has not so quietly been taking this recovery trip with us, eating the flesh of the recovery incentives, low interest rates and stimulus money and ratcheting up to bubblicious and economy destroying levels, reaching almost $120 a barrel in May.
Whoops, time to stop our recovery -- energy costs are too high now, almost all economists agree, people are buckling under the strain of $4 a gallon gas, corporate profit margins are getting eaten up, and domestic growth projections are revised downwards from 4%, to 3% to 2 1/2%.
People talk about double-dip recessions and unemployment stop improving. And guess what? The stock market goes down, losing most of its hard earned gains for the year.
And what are the economists saying is the silver lining in all this? That's right, as the markets fall, oil falls with it, giving the slim hope that maybe we can get this high price anchor off from around our necks, if only to start this silly game over again.
Crazy, right? Who doesn't see how crazy this is?
This Push-me Pullyu Doctor Doolittle beast of oil is just killing us. We've got to stop it.
My friend Jim Cramer suggested today that not everything deserves to be traded. He mentions oil in a passing way, but I'll do it much more directly: If we don't break this Wall Street blockade that oil trading has placed in front of our road to recovery, we'll just never get there.
My hope is fading. The CFTC, charged with trying to fix some of this, has been stopped in its tracks from regulatory action, is in fact fighting for its life with deep budget cuts being proposed at a time when its mandate and responsibilities are greater than ever.
All while one of the biggest roadblocks to economic recovery and success is so simple to see.
So easy, a child of four could see it -- while Wall Street clearly can't.
<b>News</b> International's Leadership Crisis - Gill Corkindale - Harvard <b>...</b>
Among the many shocking facts that have emerged from the News of the World hacking crisis, it is the revelations about News International's dysfunctional leadership and the NoW's brutal organizational culture that have ...
<b>News</b> International's Leadership Crisis - Gill Corkindale - Harvard <b>...</b>CREW Calls On Congress To Investigate <b>News</b> Corp. After Phone <b>...</b>
The watchdog group Citizens For Responsibility and Ethics in Washington is calling on Congress to investigate Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. for evidence that the company's sprawling phone hacking scandal reached the United ...
CREW Calls On Congress To Investigate <b>News</b> Corp. After Phone <b>...</b>Jon Stewart Tackles the <b>News</b> of the World Scandal
But before Stewart could expound on his point, correspondent John Oliver presented him with a recap of Rupert Murdoch's News of the World scandal--a friendly reminder that the British will always find a way to out-shame ...
Jon Stewart Tackles the <b>News</b> of the World Scandalminnesota bobby ferguson
<b>News</b> International's Leadership Crisis - Gill Corkindale - Harvard <b>...</b>
Among the many shocking facts that have emerged from the News of the World hacking crisis, it is the revelations about News International's dysfunctional leadership and the NoW's brutal organizational culture that have ...
<b>News</b> International's Leadership Crisis - Gill Corkindale - Harvard <b>...</b>CREW Calls On Congress To Investigate <b>News</b> Corp. After Phone <b>...</b>
The watchdog group Citizens For Responsibility and Ethics in Washington is calling on Congress to investigate Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. for evidence that the company's sprawling phone hacking scandal reached the United ...
CREW Calls On Congress To Investigate <b>News</b> Corp. After Phone <b>...</b>Jon Stewart Tackles the <b>News</b> of the World Scandal
But before Stewart could expound on his point, correspondent John Oliver presented him with a recap of Rupert Murdoch's News of the World scandal--a friendly reminder that the British will always find a way to out-shame ...
Jon Stewart Tackles the <b>News</b> of the World Scandalbobby ferguson grants
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