MOJO HD channel is shutting down

When I got HD on my Comcast cable in 2006 I really liked the MOJO channel. I enjoyed watching the shows Wall Street Warriors, Three Sheets, Bobby G: Adventure Capitalist, Start-Up Junkies, and London Live. Wall Street Warriors title could be used more literal now then when the showed aired originally. Three Sheets is great watching a guy drink in different cities across the world. Bobby G was an interesting character and Start-Up Junkies was an interesting show, but focused more on the marketing of a small company that wanted to grow. I’m going to miss the MOJO channel when it shuts down in December.

Please no more bailouts; It’s setting a bad precedent

Why did the federal government save AIG? I don’t understand why the federal government should bailout a public company. If a company is run into the ground and make mistakes. They deserve to go out of business. The more government intervention with companies and the market the problems of these companies will not be fixed. If a company takes on to much risk and they run into problems. That company should solve their problems. It is not the government’s job of bailout a company. Hopefully AIG learns their lesson, but I highly doubt it. The US automobile companies never learned their lesson in the late 1970′s with Chrysler’s bailout. Look at them now they are asking for federal loan to help with their future business.

I believe that the government should not be involved with business. Competition for a business is good. It requires them to improve and innovate to stay in business, or they will be forced out by the competition. The government should had allow AIG to go into bankruptcy and let the good assets be sold off. It is the only way for this financial crisis to bottom out and for the economy to improve. When there are crisis the strong survive and the weak disappear. It is time like companies like AIG who are weak to be broken up and disappear.

Random crap 9/12/2008

I order a new pair of running sneakers from City Sports yesterday afternoon and they arrived the next day on the cheapest shipping possible. I wish every company full-filled every order as quickly as City Sports.

Is the presidential election over with yet? The process is too long and needs to be completed in 60 days or less.

I can’t believe the New England Patriots lose Tom Brady for the season. I hope he has a fast recovery and is back on the football field next year.

Why do people get tribal tattoos or tramp stamps? They look ugly and when they start to fade it makes you look older than you really are.

A vote for Barak Obama is a vote not to have Hilary Clinton running for president for at least another 8 years.

I downloaded a new PDF reader today called Foxit Reader. So far it is a lot faster than Adobe’s Acrobat reader and it has tabs which is nice not to have a window for each pdf.

I grew a beard for a week. It felt weird to have a beard. Earlier today I shaved it off and now I feel younger not having facial hair.

I feel sorry for John McCain

Last week when John McCain announced his Vice-Presidential running mate I actually felt sorry for him. He didn’t make any sense for him to choose her as his running mate. She lacks the experience in national, and foreign relations. The personal issues that are have been raised in less than one week is alot. Hopefully no more will come out before the election. Personal issues I think are a big deal for at least me. If someone has personal issues how do I know they can handle the job of an office if people vote for them. I know that a good boss doesn’t always make a good family person. I feel that McCain should have choose Joseph Lieberman as his running mate. Liberman is not a conservative, but he has experience and would have fit in better with McCain campaign.

I don’t see how McCain can beat Obama in November.

Government and Foreclosures

If the government decides to help people who are in the process of having their homes go through the foreclosure process so the homeowner can keep their house. The government should make it that the homeowner will not be able to deduct the interest on their mortgage on their federal taxes. If you are going to help them keep their house which keeps the housing prices inflated they should not get the added benefit of deducting their interest on their mortgage. I know Congress would not want to penalize people, but people need to learn a lesson from the events. To own a house is not an entitlement in America, but the American dream. You need to work for it and not live above your means.

Bailouts!!! I’m over here….help me

Why does the US government feel they need to bailout everyone and everything? People now expect the government to bail them out. If I move into a flood zone and some how my house and land get flooded. The government should bail me out. If a company takes on risky investments and make a boat load of money until the risky investments fail. When the company is about to go under the government finds a way to bail out the m. We need to stop expecting the government to help us and start helping ourselves. Don’t buy a house in a flood zone unless you can pay for the insurance.

In the last six months the Federal Reserve has helped Wall Street with a credit crunch which the Federal Reserve helped cause. They have become third parties in deals like the saving of Bear Sterns. Instead of letting the market work out the problems they keep adding on to the problem. They have weakened the dollar so severe, which is the world’s currency, that a lot of countries are having major inflation and worse economic situation than the U.S. To me it seems like we throw money at a problem instead of fixing it. The Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury should be looking at how to fix the problems on Wall Street.

They should be looking at how to separate the duties of investment banks that act like brokers. They take orders like from a mutual fund and use this information to place their own orders in the market. After the Enron  mess you would think there should not be any overlap in a company.  Maybe the government needs to have more regulation on Wall Street. I feel that the U.S. government currently at this time cares only about the big firms on Wall Street and not the people of this country. We have a Congress who seems to spend money as quickly as the U.S. treasury can print it. We need to cut back the spending and start focusing on things that will improve the United States. We need to start investing infrastructure, improve the efficiency of the government, and change how the school systems operate.

A better way to save for retirement

Lately as I read about how bad the economy is and the Federal Reserve is in reaction mode, which seems whatever they do does not help anyone. I thought about how companies are moving away from pension plans for many reasons and have their employees use 401(K) plans. Most people who have a 401(K) plan contribute the percentage of what their employer will match. If the employer matches at 6% the employee will contribute 6%. The employee seems like they don’t care if at the 6% match of the employer if they are getting a match of $1-$1 to $.50-$1. I think companies should change their percentage of what they will contribute to the 401(K) plan. They should match at no less than 10%, but change their matching contribution so it would be the same amount if for example it was at 6%. It would force the employee to save more for retirement. We all know that social security is broken system, which probably will never get fixed. If companies started doing this it would do their part of making sure employees will have a better retirement financial.

Government waste at its best, Tax Rebates

Are the politicians in Washington, D.C. so out of tuned with the reality of this world? Lately the economy has not been doing that well from the daily panic on Wall Street to write downs of mortgages to a not great economic outlook in 2008. With a booming economy you would figure that the government would save for a rainy day to help out it’s people. Instead of saving they just spend spend spend. Now they want to boost the economy by giving a tax rebate to people. That’s great, but a major problem is the people who need the money are going to spend it on consumer products they don’t need. I personally will put the money toward my retirement (Roth IRA). What I don’t get is why doesn’t the government invest the money in the future like improving the education system, research, or in small business. Everyone has read or heard about how people took money out of their houses to buy electronic goodies, or automobiles that now have lost its value since they are commodity items. The United States needs to promote saving and they need to lead by example. The government needs to start working on getting down it’s debt. Stop printing money to pay for things. I always use the rule if I don’t have the money to buy something I don’t buy it. Hopefully the government can start using that rule too.

Stopping Junk Mail

It seems everyday when I pick up my mail I have more junk mail than anything else. I was thinking that Congress needs to make a law that has a Do Not Junk Mail list just like the Do Not Call list. Sending out bulk mail is a waste of money if I only throw away when I receive it. If the politicians are serious about environment this would be a way for them to cut back on the waste of paper that used for the mailings. It might even save some trees somewhere.

(Hypothetical) Solution to outsourcing

In the last 5 or 6 years outsourcing has been a big trend for U.S. companies looking for a drastic savings to help boost their bottom lines. A lot of this work has gone to India which until recently the labor was cheap. With the dollar decreasing against other currencies labor and products from these other countries cost more to produce which in the long term can cause U.S. companies to charge more for their products or even worse hurt their bottom line.  In the last few weeks the Pakistan President declared a state of emergency for the country. I thought about a scenario that might have an affect on the outsourcing of jobs to India. If Pakistan stays in this turmoil and somehow a new leader emerges. This new leader might want to show he/she that they are boss is to use Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. They would like to start a fight with India over the Kashmir region that borders both countries. If both countries are serious this would bring both countries into a military situation. Both countries would draw on their people to join the army in this battle over land. I’m assuming this would hurt the outsourcing of U.S. jobs to India since most of the people are young enough to still join the military. The longer this conflict occurs the longer it will hurt India job as an outsourcing country. I would speculate that jobs that were outsourced would return to the U.S. since no other country would have the enough people, and the skills set to handle the work.

I hope this situation does not happen since people killing each other is not needed or would solve the problems between both countries.  I have a problem with outsourcing of jobs to a cheap labor market when 5 years later U.S. companies say they can not find labor in the U.S. to do the work they needed. It seems like they only can solve their short term problems. A lot of these U.S. companies do not realize you need to invest in their employees which includes education. If you want to have employees ready for future problems you need to start today in preparing them.