The Economy and The Worm…

I’m going to search the site for the post I made back during the automotive bail out. Before we gave them the money I posted we would do it, but ultimately those companies would fail. I was going on their astrological charts. Sad to say these companies have been making terrible decisions for a long time. But they aren’t the only ones, as we all know.

Perhaps my idea of spending the money on retraining programs for the auto workers isn’t such a bad idea as it seems the heads of US auto makers seem incapable of thinking outside the box. I really wish they would have gotten it together. This is the other economic punch I mentioned coming a few weeks ago in passing. Hopefully it won’t be as bad as last fall, but my pendulum seemed to think it’s going to be much worse than most people expect it to be. 

However, I do feel this will ultimately be the bottom and we will find our way out once we hit the other side of this wall. So don’t freak out if the market starts to really drop over the next few weeks, just ride it out, unless of course you have any American auto companies in your portfolio. In that case, it’s already too late. 

I wish the auto companies would have used their resources and talent to find a workable solution, a plan to push technology further so they could again become important in the field. It’s interesting that it was an American who invented the car (Henry Ford) and for years the car companies were like the computer companies always pushing themselves to come out with better and more beautiful models. And then, they got fat, lazy and indifferent. They seemed to rely on the good faith of the American consumer and their desire to buy American products instead of putting out the very best as they once had. This is what happens when corporations get too big, bloated and conservative. If they would have continued to innovate instead of trying to control the market place they wouldn’t be in this mess.

It reminds me a lot of the record industry which championed the move to digital from analogue. Everyone rushed out to replace all their favorite records on CD. It was supposed to be so much better and the record companies enjoyed enormous profits. Not only was the new format so much cheaper to produce, a matter of pennies per unit for major labels (not including marketing and touring costs for bands which they always had) but they were selling the new recordings, and their back catalogue like wild fire.

And when it was brought to their attention that copying digital music was perhaps a problem because there was no sonic degradation, they buried their heads in the sand. And then the next step when the MP3 format came out, instead of finding a way to embrace it, and incorporate the technology so that they could profit from it, they started suing kids who were file sharing.

Once the genie is unleashed you can’t put it back in the bottle. If an industry is built on technology, it doesn’t have the luxury of sitting back, it must always be pushing the edges and developing new ideas, new visions, new aesthetics or the fuel keeping its financial sun collapses into a white dwarf until its profits are so tight it cannibalizes itself and becomes a black hole. It seems that a lot of corporations after they have amazing super nova like success collapse in on themselves because instead of taking risks they fall prey to insatiable greed and ineptitude. 

Also there has been a lot of information coming out about this new computer worm which supposedly has infected at least 10,000,000 computers world wide. Be careful, especially on April 1 as there is supposed to be some sort of command given that day.

About 10 years ago I had a creepy premonition there would be a cyber attack on the world’s banking system meant to throw the world into a frenzy in an attempt to collapse the world economy. I hadn’t really thought about it in awhile as the stories about Bin Laden living in a cave hardly seemed the place a network of hackers would set up shop. But recruiting sociopaths and freaks around the globe with the spoils of looting the world’s cookie jar could be a very unholy alliance that I am beginning to wonder about in the case of this worm. I have a feeling this thing is meant to do something big, a sort of 9/11 on the internet and now that we have all the banking trouble, well, it could be an opportune time for someone of that ilk to do something very bad, so watch yourself and don’t do any on-line banking, especially if you have a PC until you are absolutely positive you are not infected.

Best wishes and many blessings to all,

Denise