Category Archives: Technology

We cannot spend our way out of the resession

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It is a common refrain.  We cannot spend our way out of the recession.  More particularly, the government cannot spend our way out of the recession.  It should be the commercial world that leads the charge and helps pull us our of this recession.  The problem is that there are not a lot of corporations who are capable of this level of effort.  And then this morning we find one company, part of a much larger, more powerful industry, actually doing everything it can to work against helping us get out of the recession.

I present Exhibit A, the Bank of America, who announced that they are going to charge a fee of $5/month, per debit card, for transactions.  These charges are going to be directly against you, the consumer (WTOP).  Now, your first reaction might be that a fee of $60/year is not that big a deal.  But let's look at this in more detail.

First, BoA argues that they need these funds because  "the cards increasingly replace cash and as banks look for ways to offset the loss of revenue from a new rule that will limit how much they can collect from merchants."  Come again?  The cards replace cash?!  Well, should you not be looking at this as a good thing.  You do not have to count it either to the consumer or coming back from the retail establishment, you do not have to store it, and you do not have to insure it.  Not having to deal with cash, but with ones and zeros should be seen as a good thing.  Further, limits on the amount of fees you can collect from merchants is actually a good thing.  It will bring more merchants into the system because they can accurately calculate the cost of the service.  So I am not quite sure I am grasping the BoA's rational.

Second, there is nothing to prevent them from increasing these fees without warning or appeal.  And if you think that will not happen, let me introduce you to the nickel and dime operations of airlines, who have made fees an art form.

But more importantly, here is the banking industry, making huge profits through not paying interest on savings, while charging outrageous interest rates on what few loans they are making, is illustrative of the pure greed mentality that is gripping the United States today.  People will continue to pay down debt so as not to be caught paying these fees, and will therefore continue to not spend money.  And until these industries stop acting like spoiled children and start acting to the benefit of the economy, we will continue to be mired in the recession we are in.  Whether or not the economists agree that it is technically a recession is not even an issue.

Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam.

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I have a number of email accounts.  Some for work, some for play, some for junk and some for testing.  Of all of these accounts, I only pay for two.  One from my ISP and one from 1 & 1, which is where this blog is hosted, along with another site I maintain.  This morning I got an interesting email, supposedly from 1&1 (it isn't) and I though I would highlight this to those of you are less savvy about tech.  This is a hoax - do not get burned.

The email reads:

THIS MESSAGE IS FROM OUR TECHNICAL SUPPORT TEAM This message is sent automatically by the computer. If you are receiving this message it means that your email address has been queued for deactivation; this was as a result of a continuous error script (code:505)receiving from this email address. Click here and fill out the required field to resolve this problem

Note: Failure to reset your email by ignoring this message or inputting wrong information will result to instant deactivation of this email address

I have removed the link.  The one I got is supposedly from the tk TLD, and Wikipedia says, based on research from McAfee, that the  .tk domains were twice as likely as the global average to be used for "unwanted behaviors."  

So, like most email, if you are not expecting it, do not click on it.  If you think it is legitimate, then contact the provider directly, using another method.  In most cases however, despite the dire warning, you can hit delete without concern.  Which is what I am going to do, now that I have documented it for you.

Technical Note: The 505 error means the Web server (running the Web site) does not support, or refuses to support, the HTTP protocol version specified by the client (e.g. your Web browser or our CheckUpDown robot) in the HTTP request data stream sent to the server.

A Key Influencer?

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I am all for self-promotion.  After all, if you don't promote yourself, no one will.  But along those lines, there are certain terms and phrases that generally you need to have given to you.  If I were to say I was famous, most of you would laugh at me.  I am not famous by any measure of success.  I might be known, or well known, within certain spheres for this or that, but I am not famous.

Which brings me to this morning's email.  I was pinged by someone who wanted to follow my defunct twitter feed.  It still amazes me how many people want to follow my twitter feed, considering I haven't posted anything is quite some time, and officially closed the site more than a year ago.  So imagine my surprise when this individual's bio included the words "a key influencer."

A what?  Key influencer of what?  Could you maybe influence my budget?  No?  How about getting me more people to help with the sesquicentennial?   Could you influence the vendors I deal with to cut me a break on costs?  Yes, I didn't think so.  So tell me again how you can be a "key influencer?"  You might just as well call yourself God for all the influence you have.

Many will argue that social media is the way of the future.  I am not sure that this is the case.  To me social media is another way of saying mass marketing disguised as personal recommendations for a product.  After all, those have always been the best marketing tools, but to describe yourself as a key influencer, when 1) I have never heard of you (35,000 twitter fans is not a market base) and 2) You cannot influence those things that are important to me, is a little grandiose and well, self aggrandizing. I might just as well say I am famous.  It garners the same reaction.

Tell me they are not gouging

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Unless you live and work in the same building, or are independently wealthy, you cannot help but notice that the price of gas has gone up significantly in the last couple of weeks, even more so than during the unrest in Middle East, or even during the initial invasions of Iraq in 2003.

The experts are saying it is an issue of demand.  Drivers are demanding more gas.  And yet other experts, pointing to increased use of fuel efficient vehicles and radical changes in driving patterns in general say it is speculators driving up the price.  But who is speculating and what are they speculating on?

Recent reports have the price of oil dropping through $90 a barrel, normally the main driver of high gas prices.  In fact, oil has not exceeded $100 a barrel since the unrest in Libya began.  Other commodity items are similarly declining.  So who is speculating?

It will not come as a surprise that the oil companies themselves are already out in front of this with advertisements that portray them as the good guys, investing in new technologies, communities, and mom and apple pie. Yet it will not come as a surprise when they announce yet new record profits at the end of the quarter, driven by gas prices over $4 a gallon.  And yet no one can prove they are gouging, or price fixing, despite every station having the same price, and moving in lockstep when the new truck load arrives.

Clearly the United States needs to find a solution to the problem.  But the average American does not have the ability to cut back much more because of the poor design and zoning decisions that have been made over the last 100 years.  Most people cannot afford to live where they work, nor are they in control of the traffic that they have to wrestle with on a daily basis.  So until I see some real change, I cannot think that the oil companies are doing anything but gouging.  And I will not easily change my mind on this.