Tautology of the Skeptical Sinner

In other news, Bernanke also believes that the Bigfoot body was not a hoax.

Personally, I’d listen to Buffet more than the Fed chairman. This is nothing but another straw for the bulls to grasp at, boys and girls, nothing but a self-delusional bear market rally.

Next week will be a little up and down, but when we push past September, its going to be a Dark October.

It’s a great time to be short on financials.

(I’m short on Bank of America corp at the time of writing)

Reuters are reporting the New York Post has sources that state Jeffrey Immelt, CEO and Chairman of the Board of Multinational super conglomerate conglamarate conglamorous Corporation General Electric (NYSE:GE) has 6 months to shape up or ship out.

Jeff’s come under a lot of heat for two major reasons. One: GE’s stock has been flat since Immelt took over from infamous CEO Jack “Neutron Jack” Welch and Two: Slipping up on an earnings estimate that was “in the bag”.

How does Jeff attempt to redeem himself? 1st: Spin off or Sell the GE Appliance Unit, a division that has consistently provided profit for the corporate coffers and also provides the most visible exposure of the GE Meatball Logo. (Which I pointed out in an earlier post, is the perfect size to advertise on the moon) and 2nd: Buy the Weather Channel, obviously a sound business move, because, let’s face it, there will always be weather.

Life can be rough on a CEO, and despite him earning $14m last year, I do sympathize with the guy - after all, he bought a big chunk of GE stock himself. Right before it had its biggest one day slump in 20 years (the 1987 crash being the previous)

Sometimes you just can’t please Wall Street.

What wacky, job-saving idea will Jeff come up with next? General Motors is priced to sell, why not buy them? Make electric cars. General Electric Motors - has a nice ring. Either that or rename the brand from General Electric to Specific Electric - that way it won’t readily identify as a cross industry super corporation.

Needless to say, the next six months are going to be tough on Jeff.

I saw an Inconvenient Truth, and it was an excellent documentary, well presented and quite terrifying.

The media helpfully let us know each week of some other sign that the planet is warming up.

Those who propose that it is man’s impact on the atmosphere, similar to CFCs on the ozone layer, want us to adopt a radical shift in eco-policies, and they say we need to do it now.

The cost: They don’t talk about the specifics too much, but by getting rid of cheap but dirty energy like coal, the price of energy is going to go up. Guess who pays for that: You. Higher Electricity bills, even higher prices in the Grocery Store, in fact higher prices everywhere - the only thing sure to go down in price is cars - non-hybrid cars that is. Oh, and governments are going to pay for it using your taxes.

Fear is a great motivator, and having the population focusing on this end of days scenario is a good distraction from the other things we ought to be doing.

The reason I’m still skeptical is that we do not have accurate temperature records of the climate changes the earth has been through - we only have the last 250 years… we can draw conclusions based off archeological evidence and historical accounts of both the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age - but we can’t directly corrolate the impact of the Industrial Revolution and the CO² we’ve pumped into the atmosphere compared to the solar cycles others say is the primary driver of climate change.

Why do most ancient cultures have The Great Flood in their mythos?

I am not a blind skeptic, there is a lot of evidence that man may be heating up the planet… but this planet’s been around a hell of a lot longer than we have, and she’s a tough old bitch.

I’m still on the fence. But if global warming were a stock would you buy or sell. http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/06/12/temperature-stock-report/

Then there’s the visual evidence http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/north-pole-ice-melt-460608

During my day to day work, occasionally I’ll get an escalated call from our Indian call center.

“This customer only wants to speak to an American”

I take the call and I’ll always start off by saying “Thank you for your patience, your call has been transferred to me for further assistance. I am located in the U.S. but I am, in fact, English. I hope this is not a problem”

So far, it hasn’t been. And the caller will often say “I’m not racist, but I have a very hard time understanding those people” or “I’m not prejudiced, I just don’t trust those people with my personal information”

Newsflash: You are being racist. But is it justifiable?

I like a large number of my Indian Customer service reps. A good 10 or so have very good accents (One, Rachel, has a deliciously exotic accent that makes my toes curl), are extremely sharp and customer-focused people, almost to a fault. Yes, it’s true, some of the others make me want to stab myself in the face with an icepick. It’s not that they’re dumb… most have college degrees, but the cultural divide is SO vast that it sometimes feels like I’m trying to teach a dog about quantum mechanics.

That’s on the “front end” i.e. the customer service representatives who talk directly to the customers, but what about the “back end” - those outsourced employees who handle account research, mail handling and payments? Well - from the company’s perspective, the bottom line looks healthy. But in my unbiased and reasoned opinion, they’re a bunch of F&^#tards who could barely find their own a$$ with two hands and a flashlight.

How I know this is partly because of my role as escalated customer service. Our customers aren’t calling in to say “Hey! I just wanted to say that I’ve had my card for 6 months with no problems. Thanks! <click>” no… our customers are calling in to know why we F&&^ed up their account. Guess who? Bing.

But the straw that broke the camels back for me was when our own escalated research team were approached to clean up thousands of accounts the Indian team had chronically hosed. The real plum - they had to work “on project” - i.e. no credit for doing the work would be traced back to them, it would be like India miraculously woke up one evening morning and all of their f&c#-ups had vanished!

The real kicker - They allowed the research team to do it during time-and-a-half overtime. Yeah. That’s really saving money. Dumbasses. Once again, Classic Corporate Mentality: Penny Smart, Dollar DUMB

Skep

Looking at GE (NYSE:GE) today… down over 5% from an already savaged low.

What’s going on with the US’s oldest stock?

Well… for one, the sale of its $30 bn private label credit cards is currently under scrutiny, with JP Morgan Chase apparently dropping out.

That and the … strategic decision… to part ways with its appliance division are hammering this traditional bellweather stock.

Does CEO Jeff Immelt really know what he’s doing. Given that he recently bought $3 million worth of shares, you’d think he has an insider edge, but Wall Street don’t echo that confidence.

2.5 million shares were dumped as the stock hit $26.24.

Despite the rally yesterday, it appears that shareholders don’t feel that GE is a bargain at this price, so where’s the next resistance point? $25? $20???

I imagine the board at this point are putting tons of pressure on the erstwhile CEO. After all 14.5 BILLION dollars were written off the company’s market cap today from yesterdays close. (That’s what you get for having almost 10 billion shares outstanding)

GE’s units still continue to make profits, and their sales teams continue to secure long term deals.

Does the CEO know what he’s doing? Wall Street says no. But don’t worry about our Jeff, I’m sure his Golden Parachute will save him.

Soon to be followed by .duh

According to CNN http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/06/25/domain.names/index.html

Apparently the most sought after domain name in this new land grab is going to be “dot.sex”
The least popular? I’m not sure, but my prediction: “ionlyhave.sex”

First I thought I was ambivalent about this decision, but then I was in two minds about that initial thought as well. It may help the adult industry find more available domain names, but more than likely all of the speculators looking to turn a buck will be camping the Registrars like only an ex-everquest player could do and buy chunks of domains that relate to the major players in the adult world.

If they’re smart, instead of doing a first come first served virtual land grab, they should auction the domains themselves a la ebay (ooo ebay.sex! - lawsuit waiting to happen!), themselves.

An advanced, unauthorized review of their new thriller: Alone in the Dark, has apparently created a wonderful PR experience for Atari. One site broke the pre-release review publication with a “negative review” (5 out of 10 - that’s not negative, thats “meh”) in dutch.

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/53249

How DARE journalists warn the public in advance that a much hyped product that has a zero return policy is in fact a steaming pile of fecal matter and thereby interfere with a corporations bottom line. God forbid the game publisher should actually wait and release a game that’s original and worth playing.

Pre launch, this game was generating a lot of excitement:
http://buttonbasher.wordpress.com/2008/06/18/alone-in-the-dark/

The good news is that with all of this publicity, gamers will hopefully be put off purchasing the title and rightly so. The hilarity is that this one little Dutch site, that’s IN dutch, would probably not have impacted sales nearly as much if Atari had just quietly black-balled them. That’s right, boys and girls, classic Corporate strategy at work: Greedy AND Dumb.

 A while back, I was writing freelance for a gaming magazine. I panned a game called Master of Orion 3 in a review I wrote, mainly because out of the box it was a pile of steaming fecal matter. I awarded it a magnanimous 18%, which the editor upgraded to a 30 something, because he didn’t want to upset the publishers. But to his credit, he published the review intact.

So… Dutch Computer Games Reviewing Website no one had heard of before all this. Crack open a bud light, we salute you. You may have a funny accent, but when it comes to fighting the good fight against corporate sell outs, you tell it like it is.

Oh, and an advisory to any Game Publisher who plans on sending me an advance review copy, if it sucks, I’ll break your embargo to tell the 3 people who visit my site regularly world… and sue you for wasting my time.

And it will be in English, mother-f^@#*rs, not dutch. How’d you like THEM apples?

Skep

I just got asked this at the liquor store. If I’m at the liquor store, you know it’s not good.

I work for a major credit card company. I answer the phone, I get yelled at a lot. My company is a pretty good company, but lately, their decisions regarding their customers has sucked. This has resulted in me getting yelled at a whole lot more.

Obviously, the calls are recorded, so I can’t tell them what I really think, but I can tell them to go somewhere else for better rates and service. Yes. That’s how retarded my management are.

Obviously, some customers are more desirable than others, but if they’re generating revenue, why the hell would you want to alienate them in this fashion?

I’ve asked this question a lot, and my immediate management shrug, and say “That’s business”… people in higher pay grades are dictating the rules, and frankly, I think they’re assholes.

But I’ll do what they say, I’ll keep on excelling at being a corporate peon, and I’ll keep challenging the WTF decisions in a corporo-correct fashion until someone gets some sense and says “hey, this decision is retarded, let’s rethink this”

In the meantime, for all you customers we’re screwing, royally, I really do apologize for the inconvience.

As a shareholder in GE I’m dismayed by the performance of its CEO Jeffrey Immelt.

I don’t know about other generations, but my generation is expecting Super Corporations to take over the world. You know, like the Weyland-Yutani corporation.

But this guy keeps selling parts off, what the hell Jeff? Keep growing, Neutron Jack had the right idea. Buy everything, and fire the people who suck. Yes, it’s brutal, but it’s business. People expect brutal policies in business.

If one of the business units is showing a profit, why the hell would you want to sell it? BE the megacorp baby. The moon’s the perfect size to advertise on.

Somebody kick this clown out of the office and show him what globalization means.