Greece, America, And The Budget Panic

Greece is begging for money. The home of the world's original democracy is essentially bankrupt and is now forced to ask the rest of Europe for a bailout. Many of our nations's newspapers, along with Conservative commentators and dim bulbs like Dana Milbank, are suggesting that the United States will take its turn if nothing is done with our fiscal crisis. Folks, we are spending a great deal of money at the moment trying to dig out from the collapse of the $8 trillion housing bubble. As a nation, we are also facing unprecedented inflation in the health care sector. We are not however, on the road to bankruptcy...period.

Please put politics aside on this issue, as it is about basic macroeconomic realities and not the difference between Democrats and Republicans. Greece finds itself in desperate straights because they are in the Eurozone (yes, it is a real place and not a bad joke); they no longer have a currency that adjusts to regional economic realities. We have the U.S. dollar and a central bank (The Fed) that can influence the supply of money. In other words, we have the flexibility to meet our challenges whereas Greece does not.

Is Obama A Failure?

Has President Obama failed? Many Liberals and Independents have wished, for all of his talents, that the President had “a little Bush in him”. I have held that same feeling for parts of the last two years now, but I always come back to his basic maturity; he has a vision for how he wants to govern, and he is sticking to it. He doesn’t pull the hair trigger and fire people in the tradition of Washington scapegoating, and he isn’t interested in being pulled into the behavior of his opposition.

Mr. Obama made tactical errors in the stimulus bill (giving tax cuts before they were demanded), he made a strategic mistake in not pushing for financial reform last year (when he could have harnessed the populist anger to his cause), and he made an error (I believe) in not challenging the GOP leadership to write their own version of Health Care Reform last May.

Small Business 101: Inventory Management

While it seems simple, the idea that a business should have the products their customers want, when they want them, and in whatever quantity they desire is often lost in the swirl of running your own company. Many of us were raised  with an ethic that waste is bad, while some of us were raised with the notion that plenty is a sign of success. When I walk into many small businesses today, I am most often confronted by a massive assortment of goods that don't sell (recognized by the dust they accrue), in combination with empty shelves were the store's best items live.

 There are two simple laws that must be recognized when managing your inventory; inventory costs money over an above what you buy it for, and being out of stock on items in your firm's top 20% is a sin of the highest order. This two laws may seem to be contradictory, but an owner or manager can use them to his/her advantage by following a few simple guidelines. What I call the seven secrets of inventory management are posted after the break.

Osama Bin Earmarks?

The Congress of the United States of America, both Democrats and Republicans, have taken up a holy quest of sorts this week; the mission to be the heroes who vanquish that eternal enemy, the earmark! This week the Democrats in the House proposed outlawing "for profit earmarks", measures where a lawmaker inserts an appropriation into a bill that specifically benefits a for profit firm. Not to be outdone, the Republicans in the House passed a resolution in their caucus swearing off all earmarks for this year.

Wow! We are really getting somewhere now, aren't we? Well, not really. The 2008 budget proposed by President Bush and passed by the Congress totalled $2.9 trillion. Included in that measure was a grand total of $18 billion in earmarks, or just a little more than the budget of NASA. In fact, earmarks rarely total more than 1.5% of all federal spending. Attacking earmarks in the government is the same as a homeowner who can't pay their mortgage stressing out over whether they should cancel their newspaper subscription.

Nate On Sports: 2010: The Perfect Argument Against NCAA Tournament Expansion

By now, you have probably heard of the proposal to expand the NCAA Men’s basketball tournament to 96 teams. While this proposal is not “official” as of this time, by all accounts, it has been agreed upon and is a done deal. This doesn’t sit too well with yours truly.The NCAA Tournament, in its current form, is about as good as it gets in sports.   

The NCAA Tournament, in and of itself, is the single greatest argument for the college football playoff and the abolition of the horrid Bowl Championship Series. That is, teams actually settle it on the court (or field, if you want to look at it from a football perspective) rather than in computers and the Interwebs. There is drama, there are underdogs, and most importantly, there is always an undisputed national champion. Now, to be fair, none of this would change as the result of a 96 tournament. In my opinion however, the spectacle that is the NCAA tournament would get watered down. Upsets and Cinderellas, under this new plan, would likely become less and less frequent, a troubling fact to a fan like me. 

Financial Madness

Perhaps the most perplexing issue in politics today is financial reform. On its face, "reforming" our nation's financial markets is as close to a universally popular measure as any domestic item gets. Democrats, Libertarians, and Tea Party Conservatives all want to see something done. All of the above were/are outraged by the bailouts, and all, for the most part, agree that greed and corruption are the roots of the problem.

The difficulty for we the people lies in the following fact; Democrats, Libertarians, and Tea Party Conservatives hate to agree on anything. We have come to a point in our democracy where the notion of acknowledging and building on common ground is considered to be akin to a sin. Compromise has become a dirty word, compared to appeasement with the Nazis and negotiating with terrorists. We Americans, all of us (including yours truly), are guilty of turning our back on well made points for the sake of winning an argument. I propose that we adopt this issue as the fulcrum for changing the paradigm.

Selected Writings From Better Authors

Small Business 101: The Cash Budget

Most folks thinking about starting a business have heard that a third of all new ventures fail inside of two years. The conventional wisdom includes the advice that prospective entrapreneurs have two to three years worth of operational cash on hand prior to taking the plunge. What is not often discussed is the concept of the cash budget; this failure to discuss is a primary mover behind business failures.

Relevant Wishes: A Health Care Plan

The first half of this Friday double feature is a "for what its worth moment". For what it is worth, here is my version of a health care reform bill with brief explanations for each of the provisions. Many of these provisions can be found in the bills that passed the House and the Senate, but there are some major differences. Before moving through the plan proper, I will lay out a brief case for change.

Health care accounts for about 16% of all economic activity in the United States today. That number, which is health care's contribution to our country's gross domestic product, has risen from 7% (1970), to 8.8% (1980), to 11.9% (1990). Currently, the number is projected to be 17% in 2015. In the period of 2000-2007, health care inflation was 80%, versus overall inflation of 20%. The inflation facts account for a bit of dark humor, as I recall objections to the first House bill because CBO predicted it would lead to an annual 8% inflation rate for health care. Unfortunately, that it is a decrease over what we have now. We pay all this despite receiving care that is only equivalent to the rest of the world. Oh, if you or a loved one needs exotic or advanced treatment, the U.S. is the place to be. For established procedures, it just costs more without being better. The analogy would be going to Neiman Marcus to buy a pack of Hanes underwear.

Nate On Sports: From Lackluster to Spectacular - Vancouver Edition

I don’t know about all of you, but as I was watching the instant-classic U.S. versus Canada gold medal hockey clash on Sunday, a question occurred: was I watching the same Olympic games that I had previously started watching two weeks ago, or was I stuck somewhere in time like those dudes in that ridiculous-but-it’s-so-ridiculous-it-looks-funny movie Hot Tub Time Machine?

Well fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it), it was the former. The 2010 edition of the Winter Olympics, which opened with bad weather, Opening Ceremony gaffes, and the tragic death of a young Georgian luger, transformed itself into a decidedly memorable version of the Games during those two weeks in Vancouver. While the death of Nodar Kumaritashvili will always be associated with these Games, the transformation of these Games from lackluster to spectacular ensures that this version of the Winter Olympics will not be defined by that one horrific incident.

Health Care Redux

In the summer of 2008, better than 75% of Americans wanted something done about the medical marketplace in our country. By overwhelming margins, Americans believed it an embarrassment that this country lacked the capacity to care for its citizens. The explosion in costs for average working Americans was also a driver in public opinion, as well as the knowledge that our country ranked behind most of the industrialized world in most key health statistics.

The winter of 2009/2010 has not seen a change in public opinion on the keys for health care reform, but it has seen the success of the most ambitious and well orchestrated branding campaign in political history. In poll after poll, Americans say that they favor a repeal of the anti-trust exemption for insurance carriers, some form of publicly administered plan to provide low cost competition, and the prohibition of pre-existing conditions and rescission. All of the plans proposed, including the two that passed the House and Senate, contain these remedies in some degree. All of the plans proposed have also become universally unpopular.