Another Phrase to be Retired

Often when a high profile person --a coach, a CEO--quits his job, he announces: I'm quitting to spend more time with my family.

Any time someone utters this upon leaving a job, it means things were going really, really badly and were about to get much, much worse. No one quits anything that is going well, especially not to "spend more time with his family." If someone has a job important enough to require notifying the press of his departure, it means he's spent many nights over many years neglecting his family so that he could attain that position in the first place. You don't become CEO by leaving every day at 5:00 to watch your daughter flop around in ballerina clothes. How convenient that this hyperambitious captain of industry suddenly became a family man the moment his career started to flounder.

You want to spend more time with your family? Kick your least attractive mistress to the curb and quit seeing that shrink every Tuesday. Your paramours and shrink are just crutches to help you deal with the guilt of neglecting your family anyway, so spend those hours at home and you'll solve two problems at once.

Workers of the world stay home

In 1994, with the help of America Online, my mother started telecommuting to work a few times a week. This was almost twenty years ago. The future was here!

I remember being 15 and thinking; “Too bad. Offices are about to become obsolete. All those commercial strip malls designed to serve commuters; the ones with poorly named delis and over-priced shoeshines…they’re about to disappear. How sad.”

(Why a teenager would be wistful about the death of watercooler chats and crap cafes that close at two might say something about the kind of daydreaming chump I was already becoming...)

I thought by now the whole concept of driving to work five days a week would be an artifact. I figured by now everyone would be driving to the office maybe once or twice a week and working from home the rest of the time. Well almost twenty years later most people still commute. Five days a week. Significant distances. To unnecessary office buildings.

We’ve gone to incredible lengths to make the car ride more fun; satellite radio, DVD players on the backs of the seats. But the fact of the car ride, the commute, remains the same.

Now in California (home of commuter dungeons like Los Angeles) they have legalized driverless cars. That’s right. They are getting rid of the inconvenience of the human hand on the steering wheel, but not the inconvenience of the human driving to work five days a week. We would rather create virtual chauffeurs than abandon the tradition of commuting to central offices.

It's not like commuting is cheap. Gas prices have gone up a lot since 1994. The price of oil has really dominated the headlines for the past seven years. And this had barely made a dent in the standard commuting routine.
 
And back when everyone was talking about climate change, what hogged the discussion? Green energy, clean energy. Not WORKING FROM HOME so you’re not constantly driving.

The focus on climate change sparked plenty of discussion about public transportation, but very little talk of not needing as much transportation. In 2012 does the subway still need be like a turkey farm each morning?

What else has changed the landscape since '94? Outsourcing. People making sales calls from India. People performing IT tasks for American companies from centers in Bangalore. We're comfortable with having sales teams in Bangalore. We're not ready for sales team working from US living rooms.

So what is going on here? Are humans just that stupid? Well yes, but I don’t believe that is the entire explanation.

Why are we still thinking inside the box? Why are employees still idling in cubicles and gathering in conference rooms? Well, when we hear about the glories of “thinking outside the box,” the inference is that everyone benefits equally when the box is bypassed. Not true. More often than not, Managers, Directors, CEOs, bosses, whatever rubric they carry, need the box to justify their existence (or at the very least their much larger salary).

Who makes the policy on working from home? Bosses do, and bosses need conference rooms to herd people into for unnecessary meetings. Bosses need everyone in that conference room looking attentive as they go through their latest list of impossible goals and unspecific ideas on achieving those impossible goals. If this same unnecessary discussion takes place through a conference call with everyone calling in from home, one person will be making the call while watching a Hoarders marathon. Another will be painting her toes. Another will be cleaning the cat box, and still another will be closing his sleepy eyes and grunting agreement when it appears necessary. Ultimately those employees will probably be just as productive, but in this scenario, the manager’s power is diminished. On a conference call where everyone is at home, no one is staring up at the boss in search of "direction." Without that hierarchical structure, the fact that he and his bosses get paid much more for contributing far less becomes easier to see (and prove). So allowing folks to work from home represents serious career risk for these diddling parasites. When people cease to be bamboozled by empty titles (and when clients stop being bamboozled by fancy offices), perhaps a major transition to large-scale telecommuting will finally take place.

One part of my 1994 prediction has come true. All over America, commercial property stands empty. In some parts of the country, LOTS of it stands empty. Not because of telecommuting; but because the economy is in such bad shape. It is enough to make you wistful.

 

Judging a bookstore by its brown paper cover

There is a 24-hour adult book store near my apartment. Hard to believe these places still exist. Between free Internet porn and online booksellers hocking paperbacks for 99 cents, I would have thought the adult book store would have gone the way of, well, every other kind of bookstore. I never would have guessed there were enough smut purists out there to allow adult book stores to afford Manhattan rents.

I have never popped into an adult book shop, but I would like to know if they have sections for Staff Recommendations. Hopefully not. It would be awkward enough browsing in an establishment called “Johnny’s Peepers Pages of Perversion,” without also discovering that the cashier’s vices involve butterscotch and squirrels.

I can just imagine the Staff Recommendation section…next to Who Moved My Lube? and The 17 Inch Sex Diet, there would be the stupid hand-written sign below the books:

“I really believed she was barely legal!” – Sam, Johnny Peeper’s Pages of Perversion Associate.

And even if I was intrigued enough by one of Sam’s recommendations to take a look at it, I’d still be afraid to buy the thing. There isn’t enough Purell in the world to get me to put my hands on a book that Sam the Shady Adult Bookstore Graveyard Shift Cashier might have already, ahem…flipped through.

Greed is good. Hunger is better.

We have all the heard the famous "greed is good" speech from the film Wall Street:

The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind.

Apart perhaps from Ayn Randians, this speech doesn't sit well with most people; mainly because the word greed is used. The word greed upsets the left for obvious reasons, but even many capitalism-friendly, free market boosting Republicans aren't comfortable with it. After all, greed is one of the seven deadly sins, and many of these folks profess some type of religion.

But consider how much different the reaction would be if the word greed was replaced with hunger.

Hunger is right, hunger works. Hunger clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Hunger for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind.

Hunger is good conveys effectively the same message as greed is good. The constant hunger for MORE. The hunger for money, love, knowledge, etc. Free market sloganeers would be all over it:

"Hunger for success is what drives the entrepreneurial spirit!"

"The private sector has that hunger those public sector bureaucrats lack!"

"Thank goodness for the hunger of Steve Jobs!" (is there any conversation he's not involved in?)

"Hunger is good" wouldn't be a guilty pleasure at all. Even your typical dime-store commie (there are no dime-stores under communism) would cheer the "hunger for knowledge" part.

I guess what I'm saying is what's in a word? As usual...A LOT. Because if it weren't for the scandalous nature of the word greed, the speech wouldn't have raised so many eyebrows in the first place.

The ONLY Sales Tips That Matter

Sales is one of the most talked about, written about, and mythologized occupations. Unfortunately, much of the writing has come from non-salesmen. This isn't surprising. When a profession reaches such a steep level of visibility, reams of outsiders are bound to comment. And like other much discussed professions--the soldier, the boxer--the inherent drama of being a salesman lends itself to dramatization.

Because so much ink has been spilled about sales, everyone thinks they have something to add to the conversation. The fact that most of these commentators have never spent an hour in sales doesn't deter them from chiming in. And given how ubiquitous sales motifs and fictional accounts of salesmen are, you almost can't blame non-salesmen for thinking they have usable advice for those who do sell. I guess the only remedy is to somehow shift the focus to another profession. Maybe I should write an iconic play called "Death of an HR Administrator".

It doesn't stop with fiction. All kinds of "how-to" sales guides are published each year. Some are encyclopedia thick. None deserve to be. There isn't much to say about the nuts-and-bolts of sales, and the nuts-and-bolts are so tedious that reading them offers all the fun of being burned alive without the sweet release of death part. This is why books about sales typically fill in the gaps with wispy sales "philosophies."

It has been my experience that the salesmen who do the most philosophizing are the ones who do the least actual selling. The only sales pitch they're capable of is selling themselves to the clueless sales directors who keep hiring them.

The salesman who can "sell ice to Eskimos" is a myth. Sometimes a hot chick can sell ice to Eskimos, but then a hot chick can sell a lap dance to a man with no lap. Hot chicks can be plugged into most professions and gain an edge (see Danica Patrick).

And even a hot chick has her limits. When a market is saturated, when demand has cratered, when the public stands up as one voice to reject your brand (New Coke, anyone?), your product ain't going to move. A hot chick couldn't do anything with a Vegas condo right now (neither could Houdini for that matter).

Here are the only sales tips that matter (notice that the list isn't even long enough to be a table of contents, let alone a book):

1) Be on time. This is one of the few things you can control, and being late always puts you in a compromised position; you're off your game, you have to open with an apology, and you risk annoying your prospect (which leads to more compromises).

2) Don't wear anything ridiculous. The point of a suit is to build credibility, not be pimped out. Everywhere has heard awful tales of salesmen in "cheap suits," "sharkskin suits," "linen suits," etc. People inherently dislike salesman, especially loud salesman, and ESPECIALLY loud salesmen in loud, cheap, linen suits. Don't dig a hole for yourself by dressing like an arch-nemesis of Batman.

3) Be a retort man. Begin by offering some details about your product, then wait for the prospect to lead the conversation into other areas. The more he talks, the more likely he will be to believe he is actually getting what he wants. Along the way, just counterpunch as cleverly as possible and keep him doing the majority of the talking. The more he talks, the more of his hand he is likely to reveal. And when you're doing all that listening...

4) Listen (or pretend to listen) demonstratively. Be animated about it. Do lots of scribbling on your pad so it seems like you're taking copious notes. Scratch your chin a lot. All these moves create the impression that the prospect's requests are being considered and that he is therefore winning the negotiation. If he thinks he is winning, he is more likely to say yes. Remember: Pretending to concede means having to make fewer actual concessions. And when you do ask questions...

5) Only ask open-ended questions. Yes-or-no questions include NO, and the last thing you want to do in sales is make room for the word "no." (this is also useful when talking to a woman you hope to seduce).


There you have it. The Glengarry sales tips. If my blog had existed 60 years ago, there wouldn't have been a Willy Loman.

No PC, No iPhone, No Service

For a long time, not having a television was seen as a sign of intelligence and sophistication. We’ve all known that scarf-draped prick that can’t wait to tell you he doesn’t own a TV (and he probably says “idiot box” like he invented the term).

In its early days, TV had to battle with the movies for respect. Then, maybe starting with The Sopranos, many shows became more cinematic (a more “respectable” medium), and TV finally seemed to lose some of its stigma...just in time for the Internet to come along and dilute television’s newfound relevance.

In my estimation, the Internet never suffered the kind of smirch that befell television. Why not?

Maybe because the Internet was announced as the important sounding “information superhighway,” whereas television was just another entertainment tool (just consider the tone of the nicknames: “information superhighway” vs. ”boob-tube” and “idiot box”).

Maybe because the Internet was something you had to tinker with to operate (meaning you needed some know-how to experience it), whereas early televisions were just something you plugged in like a radio (in the days before television, did folks without radios fancy themselves superior?)

Which brings us to today. Today, not having a TV is still viewed as a sign of intelligence. Not having the Internet (and its associated devices) is seen as a sign of being backward, even though everyone with the Internet complains it is a cesspool of porn and misinformation (and ironically, pirated shows from the boob-tube). While it has had its detractors, most of them are seen as dinosaurs, and the Internet very quickly shook off any stigma it might have had; unlike television, which took decades to attain any degree of respectability. You might say the rapidity of the ‘net’s rise to respectability is a sign of the frenzied pace of the Internet Age.

I’m Andy Rooney, for The Interesting Times Herald.

THINK DIFFERENT, but act the same

Since Steve Jobs' death, there has been ample talk about his eccentricities and whether he was a "nice" guy.

Why is anyone surprised when someone who thinks in nontraditional ways behaves in nontraditional ways? He didn't get where he was by thinking like everyone else, so why should anyone expect him to act like everyone else?

Did you seriously expect Jobs to do exactly what everyone else does--overpay to attend an fourth-rate out-of-state college (thus gaining the debt of a brand name education without the brand name education), stay too long with his college sweetheart because he'd heard others say they regretted not marrying their college sweethearts, settle into a stultifying administrative job with a long title and a short salary, work to put enough cash away to qualify for a house he couldn't afford in a neighborhood he didn't like because it's "what you do," then one day just choose to start thinking out of the box? I don't think that's how it works. Rare is the individual who makes 30 years of mouse decisions and then one day wakes up a lion. Deep inspiration isn't a 9-to-5 task accomplished with 9-to-5 methods.

The hero-anointing masses often wish to believe their heroes are just like them. This is part of the reason biographies sometimes trigger such outcry. For instance, many sports fans couldn’t fathom that Michael Jordan, a man who maintained his lust for domination long after he’d become hugely rich and dominant, was a fanatical, pitiless competitor. For Jordan, there was an I in team, the same I that is in M-I-chael. That is part of what it takes to still care about winning after you have accomplished enough feats to last 23 lifetimes. Sorry if that makes you feel dirty about wearing his shoes. Ironically, if MJ lacked that unfaltering need for trophies, you wouldn't want to wear his shoes in the first place.

Also, famed innovators like Mr. Jobs are the folks the masses want to know more about, so it is inevitable that every nook and cranny of their personalities ends up under a microscope. The clerks who work in Apple stores have quirks too, but no one cares enough about them to chronicle their oddities.

None of this is to suggest that Mr. Jobs totally ignored the herds. He needed those herds to believe iPhones were in short supply so that they would rush out to buy them at full price. He then needed the rest of the herd to watch that first herd's antics so that they could rush out to copy them. And so on. Innovators and herds play cat-and-mouse. Or maybe it should be called lion-and-mouse.

Atlas the Shrug

CEO performance is typically judged by the price of his company’s stock. Before the crisis, it was much easier to look capable or even “visionary” thanks to all those incessant (though nominal) new stock market highs. The broader market was papering over A LOT of executives' flaws.

Now with stocks dropping and stock juicing measures failing across the board, many of those “brilliant idea men,” who were praised for overpaying to acquire companies they didn’t understand, are set to be exposed. Turnover is bound to accelerate at the CEO level too.

Too many of these guys carry themselves like Kardashians in suspenders, so it will be nice to see the CEO-celeb bubble burst a bit. I have heard enough of their painfully generic statements about “looking global” while “keeping an eye on local trends.” I don't need to hear about how he learned his most important business lesson when he forget to wear sunblock on his first day selling peanuts at NOSTALGIA-EVOKING BALLPARK THAT NO LONGER EXISTS. Oh, and did you know that although his title says William he makes sure everyone calls him Bill? What else would you expect from this “CEO next door?”

Meanwhile this shareholder value wrecking machine has a mistress for every letter of the alphabet and would be 99% helpless without his Chief Risk Officer, Chief Technology Officer, and Chief Financial Officer (who only get to be famous when they screw up).

A lot of CEO reputations are going to plummet in tandem with their stock price, leaving them to pound the pavement like the rest of us. Regular jobseekers look for jobs on sites like careerbuilder.com. Where do useless “visionaries” with no detectable skill look for work? Companydestroyer.org?

EVERYONE IS MICROMANAGED!!! Or are they?

Every man, woman, and child complains that his boss is a micromanager. If we were to take this at face value, we would have to believe that every single corporate authority figure is a bitchy Sasquatch with a sawed-off Blackberry. It is not that unambiguous.

As someone who has been micromanaged, I sympathize with the anguish it causes, but listening to people’s huffy homilies about micromanaging bosses is like listening to their huffy homilies about bad drivers. Everyone claims every driver but them is an incompetent maniac. Not true. Driving is an activity that begs for catastrophe, yet accidents are infrequent. It is simply not the case that every driver but you is unable to differentiate between the gas pedal and the brake.

It is more probable that many folks define themselves as great drivers and therefore must claim everyone who isn’t them is so useless behind the wheel they couldn’t even crash a bumper car. Just as it is impossible that every driver but you is a menace, it is impossible for every single boss to be a psychopathic micromanager. I don’t doubt that micromanaging is widespread, but I don’t think it happens to the extent the anecdotal reporting would indicate.

Here are some of what I think are the nuances of the micromanagement phenomenon:

Most people work in close quarters now; offices ("cubicle farms"). This means when you’re ordered to do something, it is right up close, so your sheer proximity to the order-giver makes you feel more micromanaged.

It also used to be much easier to fire people. When it was more of a “My way or the highway” world, you only had to tell someone to do something once, because if he didn’t comply, you could can him. Now that employees have much more leeway, you have to nag them to get them to perform their duties, which of course is interpreted as micromanagement.

And unlike the days when many people worked in factories and fields, today it is less obvious who is in charge. When you’re the team leader of an office as opposed to a factory foreman, it is less apparent what purpose you serve, so you must show yourself to be conspicuously in charge, which leads to constant authority-asserting emails and 386 word mission statements with 2 words of actual meaning.

Also, you can now send someone a command from anywhere. Before smartphones, if you were physically away from your computer, you couldn’t send or receive email. Neither could your boss. So if he went to lunch, no commands were issued for at least 30 minutes. If you went to lunch, no commands were received for at least 30 minutes. What this means is that in the old days, an email sent at 12:02 wasn’t read until you returned to your desk at 12:30. Now that 12:02 email reaches you while you’re on line at Chipotle, prompting you to scream: “Doesn’t he know I’m at lunch?!” Pre-smartphone or post, that email was sent at 12:02, but now that it reaches you wherever you are, it makes you feel he’s all over you.

Leaving aside technology, the old axiom still holds: If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. Every person thinks his way is the right way. If you’re a boss, your subordinates are never going to be exact clones of you, which means you will never get them to do things exactly as you would, which in your mind is the right way. So because they’re not you, in your mind everything they do is at least a little wrong, causing you to keep trying to correct them (it is after all your job to mold them to do things “right”). Hence micromanaging.

And because you the subordinate also think you know how everything should be done, you resent receiving any instruction on a task, because you believe you innately know the best method for the task (again, if you want something done right...). So any degree of instruction is going to make you feel micromanaged.

What is happening is the mechanisms required to be a boss in the modern white-collar world are colliding with the innate sense people have always had that they know best how to do things. I guess all we can do is update some old worker angst songs: “You load 16 GBs, whadda ya get? Another day older and deeper in debt.”




Send me a pic of your red stapler on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/greatMikePayne

Dust Off that Business Casebook

Borders Files Bankruptcy, Closing Up to 275 Stores

I can't help but wonder what the failure of Borders implies for other mediums. The store specialized in making you feel at home, creating a place where you could spend a quiet afternoon reading and drinking coffee. Problem is, coffee aside (and sometimes not even that), no one ever bought anything...just as though they had stayed home. It practically invited folks to use the cow indefinitely without ever ponying up for the milk. The "give all your content away and eventually maybe someone will reimburse you somehow" model may end up being another case of unsustainable groupthink. If shoppers' consciences could always be relied on to generate revenue, we wouldn't have security devices in stores.

Remember, during the tech bubble, people thought Internet companies didn't need profits. Weren't price-to-earnings supposed to be replaced by something like price-to-clicks? I don't recall that craze ending well. Eventually, potential consumers must be transformed into actual consumers, as in willing to shell out actual money for content.



My personal business model can be found at http://twitter.com/#!/greatMikePayne

An Incurable Case of Consumption

Any prole who has worked retail will swear on the King James that customers enter stores with a one-two punch of entitlement and victim's indignation. On the one hand, they believe they are entitled to anything, ANYTHING they request. On the other, they believe that if this hypothetical ANYTHING cannot be procured, they have been sentenced to suffer in ways that would have the Dalai Lama dressing like a goth. Despite living in a land with more consumer choice than any in history, an oinking slab of Americans act like they had no role in choosing the store in which to buy their new can opener, and no alternatives should that store not meet their piggish demands.

Upset that Target's can openers don't come with Immortal Secrets of the East? Try your luck at Wal-Mart. Or Sam's Club. Or Costco. Or Amazon.com. Or Craigslist.

Or you could brush up on an Immortal Secret of the West: can openers open cans, not Immortal Secrets of the East.



Conspicuously consume my tweets: http://twitter.com/#!/greatMikePayne

Thinking Inside the Big Box

The dismal consensus among the dismal scientists is that we have nothing to deflate but deflation itself; deflation being the great evil that must be avoided at all costs!

Riddle me this: In this deflation hypothetical, the input costs of manufacturers would continually drop (thanks to forces like plunging commodity prices...a force we aren't seeing), allowing volume-driven juggernauts like Wal-Mart--the same juggernauts heralded by many of these anti-deflation hawks--to increase volume/potentially improve profits. So if the big box, "make it up on volume" approach is indeed the wisest business discovery of the last 30 years, why wouldn't an environment favorable to this approach be just what the doctor ordered?

For all the deflationist panic about falling prices sparking a "globalized Japan," where no one shops because constantly falling prices induce them to await the next price drop, we might consider that as of 2010, the world's most expensive city is Tokyo.

Keep Louisville Boring

Louisville, KY is a hard town to pronounce, and an even harder town to visit. Appropriately, it brings to mind another hard to pronounce word; ennui.

Louisville is a desperate, colorless misuse of pavement. It's a gas station that doesn't know it. A place that just kinda happened.

An unhealthy mist hangs over the city. I suspect it's a fog created by the nitrate-heavy sweat the locals produce after feasting on the local grub. Before visiting Louisville, I'd never heard of a major sandwich shop running out of wheat. I have now. I guess in some cities, there is a last call for wheat bread. In a place where the grass is all blue, not even the horses can eat green.

And should you want to escape across the Ohio River, you're escaping to...Indiana. I hear Phillip K. Dick was going to work this into one of his novels, but was afraid no one would believe it.

One night I was directed to an area called FOURTH STREET LIVE. Basically, it's a dismal food court made super dismal by the blare of droning peasant music. You might say it's a meat market where both the food and women are rancid.

Although Halloween was still a ways off, a number of ladies were dressed as trampy devils. This failed to improve FOURTH STREET LIVE. How can a college town herd half-drunk, half-dressed college chicks into a central locale and still manage to be boring? Louisville makes it possible.

Of course, there is no accounting for taste. I'm sure some guys enjoy spending their Saturdays being sized-up for a brawl outside a Taipei Express.

After the disorienting brush with FOURTH STREET LIVE, I browsed the city's hipster section. Like all hipsters, the ones in Louisville come off as apathetic; only there, they really mean it. Not much use for irony in a town where the joke is on you. So I guess if you're looking for something different, Louisville's hipster sincerity is a rare attribute, though I don't see that as a fetching chapter in a tourism guide.

On the flipside, at least you can be sure that what happens in Louisville stays in...oh wait, nothing happens in Louisville.



The real promised land is my Twitter feed: http://twitter.com/#!/greatMikePayne

The New Karaoke?

Ever since Napster, those embracing the Internet music revolution have always said musicians should just worry about concerts. Forget albums; share your music, because the new business model for music is about selling concert tickets.

This recent article gives us a taste of how the Internet music revolution may be eating some of its children:

In the audience at a recent Natalie Merchant concert at an 880-seat theater in Los Angeles, Adam Miles couldn't focus. The man to his left was holding up his cell phone, shooting video. "Please," Mr. Miles asked his neighbor, "turn it off." A few songs later, the phone lit up again, and the San Diego harbor police officer got more commanding: "Hey, dude. You're going to have to put that away. You're ruining the show for me."

A generation raised on instant, effortless access to all kinds of "live" performance (MP3, Napster, YouTube, iPod) is probably less likely to appreciate and TAKE IN a live performance, as they've never really had to wait for one. Today's young concertgoer hasn't had the same experience of marking the calendar for a new single or album, and I believe part of what makes people salivate and focus is anticipation; anticipation partly spurred by limited access to that which you are anticipating. Distance makes the eardrum grow fond...

More importantly, because every new tool--Facebook, Blackberries, iTelepathy--quickly becomes another enabler of today's cult of self-expression, recording a concert (formerly known as bootlegging) is now more of a: "Look at what I LIKE, look at what I'M EXPERIENCING" maneuver, rather than an attempt to create a collective, Grateful Dead-type vibe.

Maybe we're discovering you can't be a gearhead and a Deadhead.

Uncertain? You Bet!

Eavesdrop on an interview with a CEO or business commentator nowadays, and the buzzword you'll hear most often is uncertainty. Can't get away from it (not even in the hot new Chevy Volt). Doesn't matter if the person is selling real estate, maternity clothing, or moose lips, whenever they're pressed to give a bird's-eye view of today's challenging business climate, they file everything in a generic folder marked "uncertainty."

The exchanges go something like this:

Talking Head: "So what's the biggest challenge facing your industry today?

CEO: "Uncertainty."

Talking Head: "We all know that small business does most of the hiring in this country. What would you say is the biggest challenge facing small businesses today?"

Small Business Owner: "Uncertainty."

Talking Head: "Having successfully managed not to foresee a single aspect of the recent credit crisis, what do you think is driving the market today?

Business Commentator: "Uncertainty."

You get the picture.

Depending on the political persuasion of the talking head interviewing them (hack Republican or hack Democrat), it may get slightly more specific; meaning the hack will editorialize about taxes or regulation (pro or con), then cleverly "hide" the editorial by ending his tirade with a questioning lilt in his voice. Usually, it is only then the CEO/business commentator will reference Washington and its proposals.

For those unfamiliar with the work of economist Robert Higgs, one of his key concepts is regime uncertainty. Abridged version: Extensive government intrusion into the economy creates an atmosphere where businesses become prudish about hiring, purchasing capital equipment, and other important decisions, because they don't know how these decisions might be affected by whatever tax or regulation the government brews next.

So why aren't more businesspeople saying this outright?

Part of this reluctance exists because being a CEO is a lot like being a politician. One "scandalous" comment can singe you (remember Whole Foodsgate?), so canned platitudes and stiff upper lips come with the job.

But also, given how much of the economy has already been ambushed these last few years, it could just be these guys are so uncertain about Washington they've even become uncertain about speaking its name. Washington has become their Candyman; don't say his name and maybe he won't come for you!

Truthfully, things really AREN'T that uncertain. Taxes ARE going up. Obamacare WILL happen in some form. The milquetoast "uncertainty" line is a fuzzy way of admitting the government is handicapping business without offending Obamamaniac customers or running the risk of becoming a certain target of that epicenter of uncertainty; Washington, D.C.

All Print is Fine Print

In Wall Street parlance, when someone is pumping a stock mainly because he owns it himself, he is said to be "talking his book." In other words, he isn't objectively analyzing the stock's merits; he is promoting it so its value (and his wealth) will rise. Naturally, all humans "talk their book" in some form, but today we’ll highlight how a certain form of book talking corrupts actual books (i.e., the press).

Those who complain about the press usually gripe that the outlets parrot the views of their sponsors. Not a crazy supposition. But something less talked about--and more insidious--is that in the media, there is no working balance between honesty and profitability. The closer you get to the truth, the farther you get from the black. And the audience is the problem.

Take Cosmo, or as I call it, Hymen Times. That rag is basically Weekly World News without the hard-hitting Elvis coverage. I'm sure Cosmo's staff has some true believers, but I suspect more than a few know they're just accomplices in a campaign of mi$information.

Each issue of Cosmo features cutting edge scholarship like, "Ten Ways to Please Him" or "What your man wants to say but can't." These at least sound informative, if you can escape the "Chocolate Chip Cookies: Are They Making Him Distant?" section. Unfortunately, once you reach "Ten Ways," you're treated to advice bearing no resemblance to any desire held by any hetero, non-institutionalized male since the fall of homo erectus. I can state with categorical certainty that doing Sudoku together using only your toes tickles no man's fancy.

Let me show you a Cosmo advice list for women reflecting men’s actual desires:

Page 1: Be a monogamous, round the clock nympho.
Page 2: See page 1.

What men want is rapt devotion in the bedroom and laissez-faire everywhere else. Basically, Hong Kong compressed into a cute, compact female. But you won't catch Cosmo admitting that, because if they did their readership would dry up faster than a reference at a figure of speech. So to keep readers from collapsing in despair, Cosmo instead caters to the most infantile dreams of its most infantile readers. And because average women have never heard such dreck, many end up mistaking Cosmo’s witchcraft for "inside scoops."

Unfortunately, what ails Cosmo also ails the "higher" forms of media. No media outlet can show us The Wizard and remain solvent.

CNBC, "America's business channel," can't tell its viewers that America's "dynamic" economy is built on borrowed money and reserve currency shenanigans, or that day traders (their core audience) rarely make money, or that literally almost every mutual fund underperforms the market. BORING! CNBC has to keep the witless watchers watching, and that means telling them this market is red, white, and blue hot! Take off your pom-poms and get in the game! BUY BUY BUY!!!

When it comes to cynical, full throttle book talking, Rolling Stone is practically a handbook. Rolling Stone has long postured as contrarian, even though it gives slobbery grandma kisses to every trend that comes along. When hair metal died in the early 90's, they began speaking of it in the kind of somber, unbelieving tones you'd expect from a medical journal discussing the days of leech treatments. Never mind that RS had spent the 80's hyping bands like Cinderella. They now wanted it understood that the days of hair metal were dark and unenlightened. Never forget.

But the second hair metal returned, what did this pillar of integrity have to say about it? "Dust off those mullets, kids! REAL ROCK is back!!!"

Naturally, Rolling Stone was just talking its book, and I don’t blame them. You can't turn a profit reporting that every band since Radiohead has been a disgrace. If they copped to that, no one would buy the issue featuring Taylor Swift’s strategy for exiting Iraq. And I'm sure any day now they'll have an article telling us Fergie Ferg is not a butta face, but rather an example of the new "Marmaduke chic."

The Entropy Over Energy

You've probably heard many of our wise men, particularly those of the neocon/world is flat persuasion, baying from the rooftops about America's need for the unequivocal "free trade" of all goods and services, everywhere and always. Except for oil. Apparently with oil, America requires "energy independence."

Many of these wise men are also climate change skeptics, always saying we need more data before committing to such drastic changes in our energy infrastructure. Fair enough. Yet in the name of "energy independence," these supposedly critical thinkers will recite the most ridiculous proclamations about biofuels, solar, wind, and other potential "energy saviours." It's different with oil. It just is.

Something tells me we'll soon be staring down the barrel of a Huckabee or Palin ticket, complete with a 5-year plan for achieving "algae independence." And these scamps won't be able to resist reminding voters that algae comes in red, white, and blue.

You'll Get My Gun When You Pry it from My Warm, Jittery Hands

In 'open carry' states, guns and Starbucks mix uneasily

Starbucks has become something of an unwilling pawn in a growing dispute over gun rights.

Advocates of so-called “open carry” laws, which give citizens the right to wear unconcealed weapons without a permit, are hailing it for not kicking gun-toting customers out of their stores

When it comes to the gun issue, Starbucks said it will abide by state laws. If a locale in which one of its shops is located allows open carry, it’s not about to tell anyone wearing a revolver to get their latte elsewhere.

Starbucks’ clientele? Typically not gun friendly, so by adopting a passive, "just following orders" tone, the company risks offending their main constituency. Regardless of your take on open carry, this illustrates the rampant myopia epidemiologists so often uncover in studies of corporate executive populations. Company boards constantly make these kinds of short-sighted moves for fear of maybe, possibly losing a handful of occasional customers (what is seen)...all the while ignoring the teeming hordes of steady patrons their short-sighted moves are guaranteed to alienate (what is unseen). The guy who won't leave his Glock in the coup to make a coffee stop probably isn't one who daydreams of frappucinos. Likewise, the effete 3-a-day frap-addict probably isn’t jonesing to share the cinnamon with Charles Bronson. I guess it’s appropriate then that Starbucks is casting its lot with the star of Death Wish.

Perhaps in honor their new gun friendly environment, Starbucks should change the name of its drink size to the Walking Tall.

What was in a Name?

From money.cnn:

Large retailers -- including Wal-Mart (WMT, Fortune 500), the world's biggest -- are wrestling with having too many types of brand-name products. At the same time, shoppers are buying less and looking for bargains.

So unless a particular brand is a top seller in its category, it's getting knocked off the shelf -- and sometimes getting replaced by a cheaper store brand.


Well then...before the crunch, buying knock-off brands sort of carried a stigma. Generics were seen as inferior, and their buyers cheapskates. What a difference the greatest downturn since the Great Depression makes. Now knock-offs are in such demand name brands are exiting stage left. Did you think you'd see the day when building a better mousetrap killed both the mouse and your product?

I remember how fashionable it was to brandish the labels on brand name items (and not just among glassy-eyed mallbots). Especially on slop like Gucci and Burberry. But now with the economy sputtering and consumers foraging for generics, displaying the label of a pricier brand will just be a signal you're one of the few left with cash. Fitting that that more expensive label will say Target.

Pretty soon Wal-Mart will be America's biggest employer and its most popular brand name. If Wal-Mart becomes any more powerful, employees are going to start wearing shirts that say: "Taxation without representation."