Been There….Done That

Some say these are unexpected and unprecedented economic times.  Media pundits, politicians and other folks that don’t have a clue, throw out scary, but often unreliable facts about our economy.  So, despite what you may have heard, I am here to affirm the economy is not “in the toilet”, interest rates are not at historic highs, unemployment is near historic lows, and the government and their responses to catastrophe (Covid pandemic) after catastrophe (rising inflation) after catastrophe (environmental calamities) after catastrophe (immigration quagmire) are either the root cause or a significant contributor to the economic challenges facing our nation. 

Let’s back up a bit though.  The capitalistic, free-enterprise economic system we employ in this country is based on several critical factors.  First, and foremost, is the dynamic of Supply vs. Demand.  When supply exceeds demand in the longer term, inventories go up, production goes down, people are furloughed, jobs are eliminated all-together and prices for products and services generally decline.  Prices rise when the reverse, demand exceeds supply, occurs.  This affects dozens of things in the economic environment, not just prices.  It affects employment, wages, corporate profits, innovation, research and development, interest rates, business expansion and government intervention, just to name a few.

Sometimes these swings through the supply/demand curve are short lived (recession caused by Covid 19, officially lasted for only two months), some are longer term problems (Great Depression 3 years, 7 months, officially).  But, in all cases, this one dynamic affects every aspect of our lives; housing, transportation, wages, savings, investments, interest rates, prices for goods and services, EVERYTHING. 

So how does it all interconnect?  Let’s look at the most recent recession which was blamed on the Pandemic (February, 2020 to April, 2020).  In response to the rapid and deadly spread of Covid 19 (called the “Great Recession”), employment in the U.S. suffered immediately and 24 million people lost their jobs in just three weeks in April.  That represented a decline of -14.7 %.  By comparison, the decline in employment in the last year of the Great Depression was -24.9 % in 1933.   The decline in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was -19.2 % for the Great Recession and -26.7 % during the Great Depression.

Interest rates, set by the Federal Reserve, in the overall market in March of 2020 were already at 0 % and Fed policies were already loosened to prop up the economy.  But our government did what they always do when faced with difficult economic challenges they don’t fully understand, they threw a boatload of money at the problem.  In the case of the Pandemic, that amounted to about $15 trillion dollars across two administrations.  It didn’t matter who or what party was in control of the White House, the Senate, the Congress, on a national level or in each individual State.   Our governments spent more money they didn’t have than at any other time in our history, raising the Federal debt to a record $ 26 trillion dollars.

While a lot of that money was beneficial to a large segment of the U.S. population, a lot of it was wasted on those who did not need it, those who committed fraud to get it, those who took the opportunity to change jobs, go back to school, and/or quit the workforce entirely skyrocketed almost overnight. Back in 1933, FDR pumped money into the system too.  He declared a Bank Holiday over three days, sent millions to support the cash supplies of over half the banks in the country and convinced the American people that government had done their part, now it was up to the ordinary citizens to do their part.  Namely, leave or return their money to the banks and apply for the hundreds of thousands  of jobs being created through an onslaught of legislative action; including The Emergency Banking Act, Government Economy Act, Beer and Wine Revenue Act, Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC), the Federal Relief Act, the Agricultural Adjustment Act, the Emergency Farm Mortgage Act, the Tennessee Valley Act, the Securities Act, the Homeowners Loan Act, the Farm Credit Act, the Emergency Railroad Transportation Act and the National Industrial Recovery Act.  And those legislative acts were passed in the first few months of FDR’s first term in office.

Unlike today, where trillions of dollars were unleashed to support people in all of the areas supported by legislation during the Great Recession, the people living during the Great Depression  who lost their jobs back then, wanted to go back to work.  They craved to go back to work. 

  


Today, because of that artificial influx of cash into the marketplace, prices started going up because demand, regardless of unemployment numbers, continued to rise. People were still buying even though they were not working.  Online purchases experienced staggering increases, savings account money was also injected into the economy along with record credit card debt. 

Because companies could not find qualified or even trainable workers, production and services suffered causing severe shortages, bottlenecks, long delivery delays, outages and 45 minutes wait times to speak with a real, live customer service representative, regardless of what industry was involved. But, still, demand remained high.  Because of that, prices started up and inflation, which had not exceeded +4 % a year for the past ten years, hit + 8.2 % in 2022.

My point is that seemingly every time our federal government inserts itself, be that through excessive regulation or a broad relief in regulation, or through monetary infusion, things can and often do go terribly wrong. Our economic system is not perfect.  When things are good, most people win, some more than others.  When things go bad, people suffer, some more than others, until the system corrects itself.  And, trust me, I have been in business for over 50 years and been paying attention for longer than that, and it ALWAYS corrects itself as long as it is allowed to act independently of outside forces….like our government. 

Comments?

SERVICE - Ain't What It Used To Be

 

I have been working most of my adult life.  I had my first job at age eleven and worked year round at one or more jobs until I graduated college in January 1970.  I then went to work of Owens-Corning Fiberglas, a Fortune 150 company in the building materials industry.  In 1985 I started my own marketing research and services company (BJS III Marketing), and then, in 1987, I started a light manufacturing company called ADvent Supply.  ADvent started in my garage with three employees, and grew over sixteen years to three plant locations (Texas/Virginia/Nevada) with 127,000 sq. ft. of manufacturing and warehouse space and over three hundred employees.  I sold the company to my largest competitor in 2003 and retired.

The key to my success when working for others and the success of my own companies was almost entirely dependent on providing the service my customers deserved and craved.  Oh, sure, we had to have good quality products.  And, yes, we had to be competitive.  But the real reason we were able to survive, grow and maintain consistent profitability was GREAT SERVICE.

The classic definition of SERVICE is the action of helping or doing work for someone and providing assistance or advice to the customer during and after the sale of goods.  In the case of ADvent Supply, we designed and staffed a company whose goal was to provide superior service to all customers.  We trained our employees and kept them motivated to serve.  We responded quickly to every request to ensure our customers got the service they paid for in a timely manner; occasionally going over and above to make things right.  Were we perfect, no, but we tried our best.

During this same period of time, we searched for companies that had not only the products we required but also the service to secure those products quickly and efficiently.  We also monitored the follow-up service when things didn’t go exactly as planned to ensure we got what we wanted and were treated fairly.  We went out of our way to do business with those companies who provided superior service even if it meant a cost premium. 

Unfortunately, we are finding that fewer and fewer companies either have the desire or the ability to provide world-class service anymore…apparently at any cost.  Since the start of the Covid 19 pandemic or about mid-2020, service, across the board, has gone down the proverbial toilet.  Today, nearly three years later, I personally have almost daily reminders that even just good service in this country is very hard to find.  And marginal service is the new norm.

See if any of these situations have happened to you in the past three years

1.)   Missed delivery dates.  (Some by as much as two weeks)

2.)  Delayed deliveries.

3.)  Much higher prices with no increase in quality or service.

4.)  No phone number available to call anyone.

5.)  Inability to connect to a live person with which to speak.

6.)  Referred to a Chat with an automated attendant.

7.)   Referred to a Chat with an actual live person who still could not solve your issue.

8.)  Transferred more than once, even if a live person was available to speak with directly.  (I was transferred to four people at AT&T over a one hour period and still did not get an accurate or helpful response)

9.)  Put on “hold” for more than 20 minutes.  (My record was 1 hour and 13 minutes while trying to get an answer on a $ 699.00 order with the third-party shipping company handling a Lowes order we had placed)

10.)                   Transferred to a person whom you could not understand (language barrier), or who was poorly trained, or who, in the end, could not help you or all of the above.

And finally, have you ever been connected with a person who is rude, questions your intelligence, or simply hangs up on you!  (I had one person who implied that my parents were never married before I was disconnected, but I’ll just put that in the “rude” category)

One might think that these things only happen with smaller companies or companies that are struggling for whatever reasons, but that is just NOT the case.  Mega-retail giants like Walmart, Lowes, Home Depot, Target and online powerhouses like Wayfair, Etsy, AT&T and Amazon are suffering with declining service with no improvement in sight.

Back in the day, if I got a complaint from one of our customers, I dug in and got to the bottom of it and worked hard for a solution.  We always tried to make it right for the customer, regardless of cost.  If you have experienced any of the above, don’t just let it go.  Contact the company and file a formal complaint.  Leave a review of your experience on an appropriate website.  Speak to family and friends (strangers on the train) about your experience.  Answer the annoying survey questions at the end of your call and hope the company listens and reacts. If all else fails, place a call or write a letter to the CEO of the company.  Yeah, that’s the one making the multi-million dollar bonus because they have been pleasing their stockholders instead of their customers.  See how long that lasts when they lose half their customers because of horrible SERVICE.

I would appreciate your perspective.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 MENTAL HEALTH - A TOP PRIORITY

Mental Health.  So much in the news these days, mental health is looked at from several perspectives.  Political, healthcare, research, and the positive but mostly negative impact of mental health issues in our society.

There is an old story I will repeat here:

 “Driving down a lonely highway, I ran over a nail which punctured my right front tire and gave me a flat.  I pulled the car safely over to the shoulder and started the process of replacing the flat with the spare tire I hauled out of the trunk.  As I took all of the five lug nuts from the flat, I placed them in the hubcap.  As I was removing the wheel and tire from the axle, I accidentally kicked the hubcap and four of the five lug nuts, disappeared through the slots of a grate to a sewer line that ran along the roadside.  I could not retrieve them.  One lug nut would not keep the spare wheel on the car, so even though I was three miles from the nearest gas station, I had no alternative but to walk there to, hopefully, purchase some more lug nuts. About a mile down the road, I came upon a six foot high chain link fence that surrounded the grounds adjacent to a huge hospital-like building.  As I got to the walkway up to the building, I read the sign over the door; “Berkshire Mental Health”.  Oh great, I thought, it’s a looney bin. I started up the long walkway, hoping I could find some attendant inside who could help.  A man, who appeared to be in his mid-forties, was standing in his hospital gown on his side of the fence.  As I approached, I nodded in his direction and, suddenly, he addressed me.  “Good morning, what brings you to our facility?”  Not wanting to be impolite I briefly told him my predicament and was prepared to move on when he quickly said, “What I would suggest is that you go back to your car, remove one lug nut from each of the other three wheels and then use the four you would have to mount the spare.  That should easily get you into town, where you can get the help you need.”  I stared at this well-spoken man for a moment and then responded, “Wow, what a great idea.  I think that will work.”  The man just smiled.  Then I said, “Excuse me for asking, but you seem to be quite intelligent. What are you doing in a place like this?” - while pointing at the sign above the entrance.  The man chuckled and said, “They put me in here because I am crazy, not because I am stupid.”

According to the National Institute for Health, nearly 53 million American adults are afflicted with AMI, defined as a mental, behavioral or emotional disorder.  Some of them you might know about, others maybe not so much.  Depression, anxiety, bi-polar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, attention deficit disorder (also ADHD), obsession/compulsion disorder, eating disorders, dissociative disorders, paranoia, and schizophrenia are some of the most prominent and they rank in severity from no impairment to mild, moderate, even severe impairment.  One in four American adults will have a diagnosable mental disorder at any given time. Chances are you might know someone personally who suffers from one of these disorders.

Is it any wonder we are having such an apparent increase in the number of mass shootings and violent acts resulting in injury and/or death almost every day?  Is it any wonder why homelessness and poverty continue to plague individuals and society?  If this is ever going to change, as a nation we must put the same kind of effort into identifying mental health issues, provide treatment for those so impaired, and increase research into finding ways to improve or lessen the impact on individuals and society as we do for treating cancer, heart disease and other prominent physical abnormalities.  Even searching for a cure for some forms of mental illness, should be a top priority.

Until we recognize that Mental Health should be up at the top of the list of problems we address instead of spinning our wheels and spending our tax dollars on complex, and sometimes, ineffective solutions like gun control, police protection in our schools, arming teachers, increasing the size of our police forces and improve their training, or handing out care baskets/blankets to the homeless.   All good things, but they do not address the core issue; mental illness.

 

Comments?  Solutions?  I welcome your thoughts.

 

Jud

 

SOME BREAKING NEWS ADDED TO THIS POST.  YOU MIGHT WANT TO READ:

Fox News reports that classified, Top Secret documents have been found missing from National Archives from the time period 1977 through 1981.  After a thorough investigation by the FBI, it was discovered that former President Jimmy Carter had them in his possession at his home in Georgia. 

 President Carter, who turned 98 back on October 1, 2022, claimed to have no knowledge of these documents being in his possession and denied removing them from the White House when he left office after serving one term as President.  The documents were seized by federal agents under a warrant issued by the Department of Justice.  They were found in President Carter’s master bathroom on the top of the toilet tank along with a couple of old copies of People Magazine and a Playboy from 1966.

 When returned to the National Archives it was discovered that the Top Secret documents related to some research on peanut allergies.  The goal of the research was reportedly to develop a peanut allergy toxin that could be used as a weapon of mass destruction.  Carter vehemently denied this assertion and said the goal of the research was to find a cure for peanut allergies.  Of course, as Fox News’s Tucker Carlson pointed out, Carter stood to benefit greatly if a cure was found just in peanut sales alone.  Interestingly, the Playboy magazine, has somehow mysteriously disappeared since being removed from the toilet.

 Attorney General, Merrick Garland, announced that prosecution of this case would supersede the cases against former Vice-President and now President Joseph Biden and former President Donald J. Trump, because of the heinous nature of WMD’s and the fact that anyone with access to Carter’s toilet could have easily seen this classified information and used it to their advantage; especially if there was no toilet paper left on the roll in that tiny room.

 Carter and his minions will face a grand jury summons and possible criminal indictment.  Republicans from the new Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, to M. Taylor Green leaped to the forefront to criticize Carter for his egregious actions while claiming that the charges against former President Trump should be dropped because he clearly declassified the hundreds of Top Secret documents found at Mar a Lago, even though there is no proof available.  Laura Ingraham of Fox News claims to have personally seen the magic wand Trump used to accomplish these declassifications, while CNN reported that it was actually just a short stick that Trump would use to pick his teeth.

 Former President Donald J. Trump has asserted not only that he declassified all of the documents he took to Florida when he finally left the White House, but for over a year presented one roadblock after another to prevent the National Archives (NA), the Department of Justice (DOJ), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from retrieving the classified documents in his possession.  He sighted arguments that ranged from “I don’t have any documents” to “The documents I have were declassified because I thought about doing it in my mind” to “Executive Privilege”. 

 In the context of these inaccurate privilege assertions by United States presidents, law professor Michael Dorf has written: "In 1796, President George Washington refused to comply with a request by the House of Representatives for documents related to the negotiation of the then-recently adopted Jay Treaty with the Kingdom of Great Britain. The Senate alone plays a role in the ratification of treaties, Washington reasoned, and therefore the House had no legitimate claim to the material. Therefore, Washington provided the documents to the Senate but not the House."  

 Interestingly, history does not record where former President Washington stored the classified documents he removed from the White House, but unverified witness accounts claim there were classified documents at his Mt. Vernon home, in the outhouse and even on the boat with him when he crossed the Delaware River. 

 Washington was never investigated, assigned a “Special Counsel” to oversee an investigation, or charged with a crime.  Washington was not a member of any political party, he ran as a non-partisan candidate in the elections of 1789 and 1792 and remains the only President to get 100 % of the electoral vote.  However, some current day Republicans, behind closed doors, are discussing the possibility of exhuming Washington’s body and burning it in effigy for his flagrant disregard in securing classified material.

Jud Smith, reporting from Texas.

Editor-in-Chief

Baby Boomer News Organization

 

Fox News reports that classified, Top Secret documents have been found missing from National Archives from the time period 1977 through 1981.  After a thorough investigation by the FBI, it was discovered that former President Jimmy Carter had them in his possession at his home in Georgia. 

 President Carter, who turned 98 back on October 1, 2022, claimed to have no knowledge of these documents being in his possession and denied removing them from the White House when he left office after serving one term as President.  The documents were seized by federal agents under a warrant issued by the Department of Justice.  They were found in President Carter’s master bathroom on the top of the toilet tank along with a couple of old copies of People Magazine and a Playboy from 1966.

 When returned to the National Archives it was discovered that the Top Secret documents related to some research on peanut allergies.  The goal of the research was reportedly to develop a peanut allergy toxin that could be used as a weapon of mass destruction.  Carter vehemently denied this assertion and said the goal of the research was to find a cure for peanut allergies.  Of course, as Fox News’s Tucker Carlson pointed out, Carter stood to benefit greatly if a cure was found just in peanut sales alone.  Interestingly, the Playboy magazine, has somehow mysteriously disappeared since being removed from the toilet.

 Attorney General, Merrick Garland, announced that prosecution of this case would supersede the cases against former Vice-President and now President Joseph Biden and former President Donald J. Trump, because of the heinous nature of WMD’s and the fact that anyone with access to Carter’s toilet could have easily seen this classified information and used it to their advantage; especially if there was no toilet paper left on the roll in that tiny room.

 Carter and his minions will face a grand jury summons and possible criminal indictment.  Republicans from the new Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, to M. Taylor Green leaped to the forefront to criticize Carter for his egregious actions while claiming that the charges against former President Trump should be dropped because he clearly declassified the hundreds of Top Secret documents found at Mar a Lago, even though there is no proof available.  Laura Ingraham of Fox News claims to have personally seen the magic wand Trump used to accomplish these declassifications, while CNN reported that it was actually just a short stick that Trump would use to pick his teeth.

 Jud Smith, reporting from Texas.