Where's the Money Going and Other Things
Posted On: 2007-08-13
If you haven't been watching the world's economy lately then you should. What's happening on the money markets around the world is going to have big impact on you and me and everyone else who is in business for themselves.
As the economy in the United States begins to crumble around the edges the rest of the world is becoming very nervous. In other parts of the world the value of shares and investments is going down and interest rates are going up and that means more and more people have less and less disposable income.
When people have less and less money to play with it means that industries like ours will suffer. Of course people are always going to be interested in porn but these days they can get a lot of it for free so why pay for it when they don't really have the money?
While you will often see some people on webmaster boards suggesting that the United States really has nothing to worry about and everything will be fine because the world depends on the United States dollar I'm not so sure. Somehow some of those ‘experts' are beginning to sound like a couple of the little pigs who lived in houses that weren't built of anything very substantial.
You just have to wonder how much huffing and puffing it will take for the United States economy to come tumbling down. Sure there are lots of very substantial parts to the US economy but there is a whole lot that's built on not much more than hot air.
In times when investments begin to appear shaky investors like to have something substantial to cling to. They like to have oil and other minerals in the ground, they like to be able to see something that's real ... like gold in their possession ... and that's where they like to put their money when things are bad.
They don't like to have their money invested in things that they can't see and can't hold in their hand or load into a truck. And when times are bad they ditch their investments in things that have no substance.
Now for a moment think about that and the crisis that has really set this off ... the sub-prime market. That was money that was invested in less than substantial things that had the backing of something that had real value. That was money that was invested in mortgages and those mortgages were backed by the real houses they covered.
But now, in the sub-prime market, those real and substantial things are losing their value and that's making investors even more nervous. So what are they going to do with huge investments in things that have no physical presence?
Well in after-hours trading one night last week investors knocked $US13 billion off the value of Google and when investors see that they become even more uncomfortable. And just to add to the nervousness Google managed to miss its earnings target for the last reporting period.
Will all that add up to anything? Well I would suggest that if the economy continues to slide people are not going to hold on to their Google shares and that is just going to make the whole thing worse. The bursting of the dot-com bubble will be nothing in comparison.
So what do we do with that knowledge?
Now's the time to be cutting back on your spending on luxury items; now's the time to be investing in your business and bullet-proofing those parts of your business that are important to your cash flow. Maybe even pay off debt if you can and don't spend what you don't have.
Surgically altering your thumb
Because I have nice long finger nails I have no trouble using the touch screen on my cell phone. It's easy, I can pick out the individual buttons with no problems at all but Steve, with his big chunky fingers that are so useful for more physical activities has real problems and always has to use the stylus.
That works for him although he does find it a little slow but it obviously doesn't work for everyone and the more small touch-screens come into use the more frustrating it all becomes. Of course there's always a solution if you're a lateral thinker like one guy in Denver.
He got so tired of hitting the wrong buttons on his iPhone that he's had surgery to whittle down the size of his thumb. Evidently his thumbs now look quite effeminate compared to his other fingers but at least he's happy ... most of the time.
You see, everything comes at a cost and body sculpting is no exception. While he can now zip around the screen of his iPhone and not hit more than one button at once, he has now found that he has trouble opening spaghetti sauce jars.
I guess some people are just never satisfied