Sunday, May 30, 2010

The Irony Of The Latest Decline In U.S. Interest Rates

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THE IRONY OF THE LATEST DECLINE IN U.S. INTEREST RATES


Article written By Douglas Castle (http://aboutDouglasCastle.blogspot.com)
Originally published in THE GLOBAL FUTURIST (http://TheGlobalFuturist.blogspot.com)
Release Date:  05.29.2010
---------------

Dear Friends:

An article follows from the ASSOCIATED PRESS which speaks of the lowest US mortgage borrowing rates in many years. The inference is that this should be great news for homeowners looking to refinance and for home purchasers.

While this appears to be good news on the surface, it may be largely inapplicable for the large majority of applicants seeking loans from banks for these reasons:

1) The “advertised rates” are only for prospective borrowers with excellent, unblemished credit histories and the highest credit scores pursuant to the FICO (Fair-Issac) consumer credit-rating standard – the standard for credit evaluation used by most US lenders. Banks typically charge higher rates to lower-scoring applicants in order to adjust for their increased “credit risk.”

2) The same banks and affiliated credit card companies [which largely, because of their negligence, recklessness and unbridled greed created and fueled the global economic meltdown have severely damaged the credit scores of countless consumers through loan foreclosures, repossessions, increased personal bankruptcies, credit card line reductions, credit card closures, late fees, over limit fees and other lawless and opportunistic moneymaking opportunities associated with institutionalized consumer fraud perpetrated on a credit-addicted society] are the ones who are now applying increasingly stringent standards to loan applicants.

In fact, these banks are tightening up their underwriting guidelines weekly due to policy guidelines being handed down to them by their principal insurer, Fannie Mae. Be reminded that Fannie Mae was one of the biggest defaulters in the economic meltdown. But, unlike consumers, the government deemed them “too big to fail,” and started the printing presses rolling to bail them out.

Some of the biggest bailout beneficiaries are now reporting record profits – they are, in essence, using taxpayer money gifted to them by the Fed (in plainspeak, the banks and financial institutions pissed away all of the taxpayers’, savers’ and investors’ money, and now the government is making the taxpayers PAY TWICE to maintain the banking system’s entrenched entitlement to profits), and buying government securities (which increases the national debt, for which the taxpayers will have to pay YET AGAIN.


This is an incredible economic debt loop which cannot be broken without some kind of actual productivity, earnings, employment and fresh thinking. In the meantime, all of the money (either scrip or electronic book entries) is being hoarded by the financial institutions. They are being rewarded for not taking any entrepreneurial risk. They are making money by using debt (or bailout welfare money) to purchase more government debt.

Here are a few things to anticipate:

1)  Following the stabilization of the Euro, and of the European capital markets, the US dollar will again dive in value, and our sovereign credit rating will drop, institutions outside of the US will stop buying our Treasury Paper (which is, by the way, what is temporarily driving US interest rates down for the time-being), and rates will begin to creep up again. What we are experiencing now is just a brief bit of luck that the European Markets look a bit worse than those here in the US. Our Treasury Securities are the “default investment” when things get dicey in Europe;

2)  The US Treasury is going to be taking the muzzle off of the Internal Revenue Service – its hired gun, so to speak - within the next month or so, in order to start replenishing its empty war chest. Expect vigorous, aggressive and brutal IRS audits and assessments, and heightened, expedited enforcement action (seizures and sales of assets) to raise money from the easiest targets: individuals and small businesses, most of whom are easily intimidated, cannot afford to mount a defense, and will do virtually anything in order to pay whatever the IRS says that they owe. The percentage of taxpayers audited will increase, collections will increase, and the economy will be profoundly damaged.

Friends – this is nothing short of a reign of terror.

3) Because of items 1 and 2, above, expect many Boomers and recent graduates to leave US citizenship behind in favor of working in Asia, parts of Europe, and Middle East. This will produce an unprecedented brain drain in the US. Of course, businesses, opportunities, entrepreneurs and innovation will flee from the US as well. This is already happening at an alarming rate.

4) The stragglers, those left behind in the US, will be government employees, the ultra-wealthy, those who are incarcerated, or those who are part of the ever-present underground economy.

The AP article follows:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mortgage rates sink to lowest this year

By ALAN ZIBEL, AP Real Estate Writer Alan Zibel, Ap Real Estate Writer 2 hrs 42 mins ago
WASHINGTON – Mortgage rates have fallen to the lowest level of the year as investors poured money into the safe haven of U.S. government securities.
The average rate on a 30-year fixed rate mortgage dipped to 4.78 percent this week from 4.84 percent a week earlier, mortgage company Freddie Mac said Thursday. It was the lowest level since early December, when rates fell to a record low of 4.71 percent.
The average rate on a 15-year fixed-rate mortgage fell this week to 4.21 percent_ the lowest level in nearly two decades.
Concerns over the European debt crisis have sent yields for 10-year and 30-year Treasury bonds to their lowest levels of 2010. Rates on 30-year home loans often rise and fall in line with the 10-year note.
Analysts say the opportunity may not last. If Europe's woes subside and the U.S. economic recovery stays on track, rates are likely to move higher. That's because traders will move their money back into riskier investments.
"Strike now," said Greg McBride, senior financial analyst at Bankrate.com. "If they move quickly against you, it just takes money right out of your pocket."
Homeowners appear to be taking notice. Applications to refinance surged this week to the highest level since October 2009, the Mortgage Bankers Association said Wednesday.
But mortgage applications to purchase homes fell to the lowest level since April 1997. A major reason for that drop: tax credits expired on April 30.
A campaign by the Federal Reserve to reduce borrowing costs for consumers pushed rates down to extraordinarily low levels last year. Rates were expected to rise after the program ended this spring. Instead, they have dipped. Fears that Greece's government would default on its debt shook world markets and boosted demand for U.S. Treasurys.
Freddie Mac collects mortgage rates on Monday through Wednesday of each week from lenders around the country. Rates often fluctuate significantly, even within a given day.
Rates on five-year, adjustable-rate mortgages averaged 3.97 percent, up from 3.91 percent a week earlier. Rates on one-year, adjustable-rate mortgages fell to 3.95 percent from 4 percent. That was the lowest average since May 2004.
The rates do not include add-on fees known as points. One point is equal to 1 percent of the total loan amount.
The nationwide fee for loans in Freddie Mac's survey averaged 0.7 a point for 30-year, 15-year and 5-year loans. The average fee for 1-year loans was 0.6 of a point.
####
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Faithfully,

Douglas Castle

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Monday, May 24, 2010

Bypassing The B.S. of Bureaucracy by Drawing The Line

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Bypassing the B.S. of Bureaucracy by Drawing The Line.

-By Douglas Castle, Vice-Chairman and Featured Columnist for The National Networker Weekly Newsletter.

Dear Readers:

We are a very foolish species, and we perpetuate the petty, unreasonable, endless  bureaucratic processes that consume our productive time and frustrate us endlessly. We do this damage to ourselves and to our world by simply "playing along." That feeds the beast -- that, of course, and the need for administrative and clerical jobs to keep people employed. It simultaneously destroys the quality and efficiency of life and business, while installing animated corpses in "jobs." 

By making a process more complicated, there is more employment created, at the expense of efficiency and common sense. We, of this world, live in a society of entitlement and complexity, instead of merit and efficiency.

When confronted with a seemingly endless list of administrative steps, and when you are so discouraged at stupid answers like, "everybody goes through it," or "it's our policy," or "things are tough -- that's just how it is," or my favorite, "they (whoever they are) are forcing us to do it this way," you know that your chain is being yanked.

The only civilized way to bypass this process is to draw the line and declare that 1) you are an exception; 2) that you are being mistreated, abused and possibly defrauded; 3) that you believe that the other party may be acting in bad faith, or not have the power to act reasonably, and; 4) demand to speak with the individual's supervisor. At this last request, they will either suddenly become "creative," or they will connect you with a supervisor. Repeat this simple process until you reach a person who can make policy exceptions. Every organization has people empowered to make decisions and exceptions.

Your mission: Get to that person. Get to a leader. Get to a decisionmaker.

Should you fail to do this, you will continue to be treated like a leper in a nursery, or run around in endless circles of futility. And worse, you will probably spend a great deal of your precious time on something which you may never accomplish.

If you wish proper consideration, pull yourself out of the hands of robotic clerks, policy-sticklers, excuse parrots, and other impotent barriers to your success, and get to a person empowered to treat your case with special care. Every rule, every policy and every law has exceptions. It is a fact of life.

Would you like to end this bureaucratic B.S.?  Protest and bypass it.

Faithfully,

Douglas Castle


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Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Hand Caught In The Cookie Jar? - The Three Favored Strategies.

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Hand Caught In The Cookie Jar? - The Three Favored Strategies.

Written by Douglas Castle, and originally published in TAKING COMMAND! (http://takingcommand.blogspot.com/)

Dear Friends and Worthy Opponents:

One learns a great deal by studying the antics of politicians and public figures when a scandal begins to unfold about them. I have found that there are three predominant menas through which these pressured, self-important persons address allegations of moral turpitude, and things far worse -- especially when these allegations are true. Here are the three:

1. DENIAL AND DEFLECTION ("D and D") - This strategy is generally short-lived, as it might buy the user some time, but the truth (sadly) persists. The objective is to not only deny the allegations, but to become angry and indignant at the "outrageousness" of the allegations. This must be immediately following by pointing the finger back at the "accusers" and raising the spectre of a political conspiracy by adversarial interests, a vendetta, a means of taking the public's attention away from the wrongdoing of the accusers, themselves.

Exemplary User: Bill Clinton

2. FLAMEBACK AND COUNTERATTACK ("The Big F") - This is the strategy where the user absolutely admits to what he is accused of, claims that it was necessary and justified (usually by greater interests, such as The National Security, etc.), accuses the accusers of being weak, foolish, unpatriotic, traitorous or worse. The user is adamant, and expresses no regrets. He insinuates that anyone who would find fault with his actions, given the "circumstances" is an "enemy of democracy," or "enemy of the people," or an "enemy of progress."

Exemplary Users: George W. Bush, Dick Cheney

3. ADMISSION, APOLOGY AND WITHDRAWAL ("AAW") - This is the strategy where the user admits to the accusations, apologies to his family in a press conference, and withdraws from public service because he either a) does not want any scandal to interfere with the higher directives of his former office, sport, team, etc., or because b) he does not want his family to be tormented and harrassed by news reporters, investigators and other persons who would seek to capitalize (i.e., to earn a living or win a conviction) on his misdeeds. It's always good to do things for the protection of one's beloved family.

Exemplary Users: Too many to mention ... but keep watching the news about politicians who have either fibbed or misled others about their heroic military service... or those who have had a tryst or two with an intern or subordinate...

People are truly fascinating. Especially when high-stakes positions and scandals are involved.

Faithfully,

Douglas Castle


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Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Facts, Fiction and Exploitation - Things To Be Concerned About - Douglas Castle

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Facts, Fiction and Exploitation - Things To Be Concerned About - Douglas Castle
 
1). If Someone Wins All Of The Time At Any Game Of Chance, The Game May Be Rigged.
 
2). If Someone Claims To Win All Of The Time At Any Game Of Chance, They May Be Lying.
 
3). In The Securities Marketplace, A "Greater Fool" (Or Fools) Must Incur Losses for The Purported Winners to Keep Winning -- It is Rather Like A Game Of Musical Chairs...When The Music Stops, Someone No Longer Has A Seat, And Is Stuck With Overpriced And Unsaleable Investments.
 
4). Big Securities Trading Firms Have Credit -- If They Incur A Positional Loss For One Day, They Don't Have To "Settle Up" With The Bank Until They Have Had An Opportunity To Trade Some More, And Win Back Their Losses (Usually At Somone Else's Expense)... And What If These Large Firms Are Intimately Affiliated With Those Banks? [Conflict Of Interest? Hmmm...]
 
5). Smaller Investors In The Markets Do Not Have The Credit Facilities To Buy Time To "Set Things Right." They Must Pay For Their Losses Immediately, In the Worst Of Possible Circumstances And Lose Their Holdings In A "Fire Sale" Scenario. Then, They Can Never, Ever Recoup Their Losses. These Losses Become Permanent. Large Trading Firms And Their Bankers Get To Lock In A Profit Because Of Their Obvious Credit Advantage.
 
Observation A: The Large Banks ("too big to fail!"), The Trading Firms ("slap them on their greedy wrists!"), An Impotent And Often Compromised Government Are Aggressively, And Perhaps Maliciously [Conspiracy? No -- That's Silly Stuff] Bringing The Public To Its Knees.
 
Observation B: This Is Not Because Of Capitalism. This Is Because Of Encultured, Unpunished, Short-Sighted Greed.
 
Observation CIndividuals, Entrepreneurs, And Emerging Enterprises Must Act Expediently If They Are Not To Become Enslaved. Cooperation and Collaboration Can Be Used To Rapidly Unite And Grow These "Grassroots" Victims Into A Force With Lobbying Power, Resources And Political Clout.
 
The above ends my rant. The following article, which was published in The Daily Reckoning, caught my attention:
 
Goldman's Perfect Quarter
Defying the odds in the "robot combat arena"

Eric Fry
Eric Fry
Reporting from Laguna Beach, California...

While the European Central Bank (ECB) was busy manipulating markets and making headlines Monday, Goldman Sachs was quietly revealing a different story of market manipulation...or something that walks and quacks very much like a market manipulation duck.

In an SEC filing, Goldman disclosed its first-ever "perfect" quarter. The firm's proprietary trading desk navigated the first quarter without producing a single day of losses, the first time it had accomplished such a feat.

How is this possible? Please permit us to offer a simple explanation: It's not.

Imagine a poker player who competes against skilled competitors for 63 sessions of 6 1/2 hours each, then walks away with a profit after all 63 sessions. Would that be possible? Not unless the poker player is holding a stack of aces up his sleeve. But Goldman accomplished this improbable feat. Its trading desk turned a profit on each and every day of the first quarter - that's 63 trading sessions of 6 1/2 hours each, not counting whatever additional shenanigans Goldman was conducting in foreign markets.

There is something wrong with this picture...very, very wrong. And yet, Goldman trumpets this success as an example of something that is very, very right. "This is the first time we have reported zero trading loss days in a quarter," crowed Samuel Robinson, a Goldman Sachs spokesman. "We believe it shows the strength of our customer franchise and risk management."

An alternative interpretation would attribute Goldman's uncanny trading success to the strength of its "political franchise," subsidized risk- taking and various forms of de facto front-running. If, as James Howard Kunstler asserts, the US stock market has become "a robot combat arena where algorithms battle for supremacy of the feedback loops," Goldman Sachs must control the "Supreme Combat Robot." But we wonder whether this robot is abiding by all applicable securities laws, or vaporizing them with his special "Mega-fraud laser beam."

"If you ever wanted to see what a monopoly looks like in chart form," jokes Tyler Durden from Zero Hedge, "here it is:



Daily Trading Net Revenues


"The firm did not record a loss of even $0.01 on even one day in the last quarter," Durden says. "The statistic probability of this event is itself statistically undefined. Goldman is now the market - or, in keeping with modern market reality, Goldman is the 'house,' it controls the casino, and always wins. Congratulations America: you now have far, far better odds in Las Vegas that you have making money with your E- Trade account."

In fairness to Goldman, JP Morgan also produced a perfect quarter of proprietary trading. Morgan Stanley, the relative loser in the crowd, managed to produce a trading profit on only 93% of its trading days.

"The rape and pillage of the middle class was not isolated to Goldman," Durden continues. "JP Morgan also had a flawless quarter. And if the odds of Goldman making 63 out of 63 are virtually impossible in any universe in which risk goes hand in hand with return (but in those in which monopolies are encouraged and bailed out), the coincidence of the two main firms that control the world having a perfect track record is impossible. And since things in reality tend to be zero sum, when everyone makes money, someone may be tempted to ask the question, just who is losing money? And the answer, dear taxpayers, and [Goldman/JPMorgan] clients, is you."

Perfection is either a religious virtue or a devilish fraud, dear reader; it is never a financial market reality. So there's something a little troubling about the perfection achieved by Goldman's (and Morgan's) trader-bots. In fact, there might be something a lot troubling about their trader-bots, as well as their investment-bank- atrons.

Perhaps the truth will come to light in the fullness of time...or in the details of a future SEC complaint.

Goldman acknowledged in Monday's SEC filing that it still faces a large and diverse number of criminal and quasi-criminal investigations. In addition to a bevy of investigations by the SEC, Goldman is facing detailed probes by the Justice Department, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority and the UK's Financial Services Authority related to CDO offerings and related matters.

"We anticipate that additional putative shareholder derivative actions and other litigation may be filed, and regulatory and other investigations and actions [will be] commenced against us with respect to offering of CDOs," Goldman's filing somberly disclosed, "[These probes] could result in collateral consequences to us that may materially adversely affect the manner in which we conduct our businesses."

Hmmm...we'd guess that the list of "collateral consequences" would include reducing Goldman's trading success from 100% to something much lower. And since trading revenues accounted for 80% of Goldman's revenue in the first quarter, we'd guess that much lower net profit will be another "collateral consequence."
####

In my opinion, this article, while more than a bit sardonic in its tone, is dire in its implications.

Faithfully,

Douglas Castle

 
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President Obama "Infuriated" With Douglas Castle. - AP News

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President Obama "Infuriated" With Douglas Castle.
AP- Tuesday, May 11
"I simply wanted to ask him a quick question about something that I'd read in The National Networker Weekly Newsletter, and he doesn't have the decency to stop what he's doing for one minute to take my call. Just who does this Douglas Castle think he is? Didn't his parents teach him any manners? I hear that the Pope has been waiting a week to get a return call from this guy."
####  
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Wednesday, May 05, 2010

Words Of Caution To The Intelligence Community and to Management - Douglas Castle

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Words Of Caution To The Intelligence Community and to Management - Douglas Castle

Dear Friends, Colleagues and all Others who Honor me by Their Reading:

Trust is a touchy and tricky issue.

Some months ago, several CIA employees and operatives were massacred at an overseas station by a fellow whom they truly believed was acting as their double agent - a "converted" and "reprogrammed" former terrorist operative, who was given the opportunity to work for the CIA by gathering intelligence from his old contacts and reporting back to the CIA. This particular individual should not have been in a position of trust, was not "reformed" (this word is almost a self-parody), was embittered and probably divulged CIA secrets to the persons upon whom he was supposed to be spying. The coupe de gras, of course, was his ultimate murder of his CIA colleagues.

Perhaps he was not converted, reprogrammed or even refocused. He was the most dangerous person to have in your inner circle - the "presumed" convert. This tragedy or poorly-gauged loyalties and misplaced trust is far more common than one would think. In the U.S., we had a massacre of soldiers at Fort Hood by one of their comrades who was an ardent, vocal protester against U.S. Military policy in the middleast, Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran.

Place your trust in only a  few very carefully-screened individuals. Test them on small missions and observe their conduct and results. Test them repeatedly and frequently. Take their every utterance (even offhanded, or said in the spirit of jest) carefully. Take their histories and childhood experiences, training and educations into account.

The most dangerous enemy is 1) very intelligent, 2) finds his/her way into our trusted inner circle (some people are amazingly good actors, and possesses a natural talent to infiltrate and engender rapport), and 3) has a destructive agenda.

The enemy whom we do not recognize as an enemy is highly dangerous.

The enemy whom we have come to believe is a friend is deadly.

People who are intently devoted to an idea or ideology, or people whom have lost a loved one at the hands of the minions of an agency are not easily converted or reformed. They are deeply programmed, and this programming is further seasoned with an unresolved desire for vengeance (typically Human) which often is more deeply entrenched by the passage of time and a feeling of impotence or helplessness to serve a childhood master, to honor a martyred friend, or to avenge the death of a family member.

A "manufactured" ally --- an "ally" who is seemingly deafeated by emotional or physical torture, and then seemingly "rebuilt" to work for those whom have done him or her serious damage, can be the most crippling force to be unleashed close to home.

The Stockholm Syndrome is not as powerful or as permanent as people would think; however never, ever underestimate the bitterness, determination and lethal motivation of a person who feels that he or she was punished unjustly or unfairly, and never, ever underestimate the persistence of deeply ingrained memories of loss or pain. Hatred can be deeply concealed.

As any well-seasoned sadistic torturer ultimately learns, a victim will sometimes say anything that he or she believes that the captors want to hear in order to simply stop the pain. 

Faithfully,

Douglas Castle 





















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Monday, May 03, 2010

Growing Dependencies/ Growing Risks/ Growing Opportunities.

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Growing Dependencies/ Growing Risks/ Growing Opportunities.

From THE GLOBAL FUTURIST (http://TheGlobalFuturist.blogspot.com) in conjunction with The National Networker Companies at http://www.TheNationalNetworker.com with all rights reserved.

Dear Friends and Fellow Futurists:

I won't waste time debating about whether or not the US is actually in an economic recovery, or about whether or not Europe (particularly Portugal, Geece and some of the Mediterranean countries) is falling further into one -- at this point, these things are issues of semantics, propaganda and wild conjecture. I believe that an economic recovery involves 1) employment and jobs creation; 2) an increase in the use of existing industrial capacity; 3) an internationally highly-regarded sovereign credit rating; 4) an increase in the median amount of disposable personal income, and; 5) an increase in the median rate of savings. In the words of great American Statesman, Meritorious Philosopher and Student of Humanity (Forrest Gump), "and that's all I have to say about that." 

I won't discuss energy alternatives, offshore drilling, a "greener" lifestyle, iPads, corporate corruption or cloud computing. I just wanted to focus on dependencies; in particular, I wanted to discuss communications, formatting dependencies, server dependenciesdata storage, list management services, button and blog platform dependencies and data manipulation and management ("M and M").

Many large corporations, government agencies (even the national defense systems of a number of countries) have become totally dependent upon these independent (and often free or minimally-priced) media services such as Google, Blogger, Feedburner, Twitter, FaceBook, Skype, CitrixYouTube, and a number of others. While companies and governments are enjoying all of these wonderful utilities, they have 1) become totally dependent upon each of them as a soul-source provider, and they have also 2) given them unrestricted access to mailing lists, trade secrets, and other valuable proprietary information.

As a Global Futurist, my contention is that enterprises have given over substantially all of their power, information and access to the service providers. This is colossal exposure.

If one of these providers started charging exhorbitant rates for what used to be a free service, what are the users to do? If one of these providers decides to sell or otherwise use your information for nefarious purposes (unsolicited advertising, list brokering, data mining, et. cetera) what are your practical defenses? If one of these service providers had a glitch and eradicated all of your crucial information (quite by accident), what would you do? If one of these service providers just decided to go out of business, what would you do? By analogy, think of rising oil and gasoline prices, the wholesale failure of our trusted financial instituions (as well as their capricious volatility and the devastating effect which they have had on the economy).

Growing dependencies become growing risks. While they are in large part unavoidable, they can be mitigated with means of independently backing up data, applications, mailing lists and other information and formats.

Expect to hear al gret deal during the next three years about these large providers acting like bully monopolists. Their shares will tend to do relatively well in the eqiuties markets (as they are always in the news and are, by their nature, self-promoting), but they will perceived as increasingly menacing bullies.

Free services are not permanently free. They are free during their beta-testing phases, while they are achieving great user growth and volume, and while they can afford to be. Bit invariably, investors want to see a return on their capital invested. When this happens, the end-users will have already become a captive audience (rather like prisoners), will be unable to assemble enough power and influence to push these newly-monetizing into sensibility and compassion.

Expect to also hear about the emergence of fail-safe various data and format back-up services -- principly, new enterprises coming into being to protect the end-users from the threat of business devastation at the hands of these utilities as the warnings about outages (remember Enron in California?), increased charges and increasing demands upon users grow, as these once geek-driven friendly utilities start wanting to pay their venture capital providers back. The increase in conglomeration and consolidation of these computer utilities titans will make the threat increasingly more serious, adding an element of opportunism and initiative to the end-user population.

You might consider either 1) starting up a company that specializes in backup solutions; 2) investing in a company which is developing (as a DSE - developmental stage enterprise) these solutions; 3) being prepared by keeping a Futuristic eye on the companies, and engaging with them. You'll likely consider becoming a client.

In this case, I request that you begin backing up your data, presentation formats and and all of your information, as well as all of your proprietary and precious systems.

Trite, but appropriate:

Faithfully,

Douglas Castle

p.s. If you've not already done so, please join us (at no cost) as a Member of The National Networker Companies -- join us today at: http://bit.ly/JoinTNNWC 

NOTE: Information on some of my other blogs and media sites follows below this line of text. Please feel free to explore my blogs and other media. You might even take a gander (or a gosling, or perhaps a furtive glance) at Adam J. Kovitz' s personal blog, which can be found at http://adamjkovitz.blogspot.com/.


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Sunday, May 02, 2010

Always Know What the "Supposed" Activists, Extremists, and Partisan Players are Saying, Thinking and Doing.

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Note: This content was originally published in The National Networker Weekly Newsletter, and is has been edited and reprinted with permission.
Sorting Through "Extreme News" From Left, Right and Center - A Crucial Skill-Builder At Trend-Spotting and for Strategic Planning.

Remember: Today's radical or "impossible" idea may well become tomorrow's reality. You've seen it more than once in your lifetime.


Author's Note: Every entrepreneur, and every single emerging enterprise requires management, market research, marketing, publicity, branding and a constant re-evaluation of potential future trends. If you are so biased that you deliberately exclude (adversely select against) "radical" or "extremist" publications which don't conform to your pre-existing views, you will merely be recycling your own brand of stupidity -- some call this "the kindling of circular intelligence."  Get outside the coffin of comfort and look at what extremist, activist and super-partisan organizations are up to.

The key is to be open to information which comes from any and all sources...to be able to detach yourself emotionally from the political or other agendas of their writers, publishers and promoters, and to gather intelligence which may be actionable.

Every leader, manager, marketing director, financial officer, planning officer, product or service developer must be as an objective Information Hound, to the greatest extent possible.

If you limit your total news intake, you limit your knowledge base, thinking, insight, intellectual growth, analytic ability and efficacy, and ability to survive and thrive. I can read the SPECTATOR, MOTHER JONES, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, BUZZFLASH BULLETIN and THE ROLLING STONE in one sitting. I can listen to NPR as well as a series of Sunday morning sermons, deluxe with sulfur and brimstone. I've watched Limbaugh and Bill Maher (but then again, I've also watched Dexter and Everyone Loves Raymond...) 

When it comes to the necessary job of futurism, more information is always better. Learn to expose your yourself to more input, while trusting that your character and judgment will not be hurt in the process. In fact, this testing will get you more in tune with who you truly are -- and that is a wonderful thing. - DC

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Dear Readers:

Some interesting headlines and brief articles from some of the more "extreme" news sources (actually, in many cases these are more appropriately called conjecture sources) may prove to be a fountain of some useful information. Understand that in every article, there is a grain of truth (an initiating spark, fear, or observation which inspired the writer) and a large element of propaganda. The trick is to separate the elements of truth from the surrounding rhetoric. One of the means of doing this is by rudimentary correlative analysis....for example, if two politically opposed groups speak of the same subject and make similar observations about its implications, you might have unearthed a piece of truth.

If two adversaries agree on a common problem or a common trend -- it is invariably one worth watching. Finding these areas of informational intersection is one of a true intelligence analyst or Global Futurist's most important skills. I'll admit that sometimes it is a bit of a stomach-turner to read through the accusations, recriminations, bigotry and hate-speak. But the gold which you will pan from this stream of compost is still gold.

This is a great skill, and a great exercise. Use this analysis tool often, and your abilities to see through the smoke to the spark will increase appreciably.

Visit LEFT, RIGHT AND CENTER at: http://leftrightandcenterwidget.blogspot.com/ , and acquire the widget.

More Info + More sources + Rudimentary Correlative Analysis = Better planning for your life and your business.

Faithfully,

Douglas Castle,

Vice Chairman
THE NATIONAL NETWORKER COMPANIES

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