Blog

Vacation’s over and I’m definitely ready to get back to work and back to blogging.  Over the past week:

• I traded my old Ford Ranger with 186k miles and a trashed U-joint for a 2001 Ford Explorer Limited with 100k, fully loaded.  A dramatic improvement in my commute…
• We celebrated Madison making honor roll.
• Had a great Thanksgiving at my mothers house with my side of the family.  It was excellent to see everyone.
• Worked on some general financial housekeeping chores.
• Finally removed the leaves from the yard.

The holidays are the hardest time for many people.  Instead of a time of joy and togetherness like you or I might seek, they are often caught in a world of loneliness and depression.

For some, dealing with something as simple as having family members all together for a single meal is too much to take, due to past issues or complex family dynamics.  That 40 year old business woman sitting across the table may actually be feeling like a 10 yo little girl who has been exiled to the leper table.

For some, this time of year is not a kick off to the wonder of the holidays, but to an entire season of pain…

Even with the financial crises we face, with layoffs, with war, with uncertainty, there is so very much for us to be thankful for.  Express your thanks tomorrow by helping someone else find those things they can be thankful for.  Help others to experience a holiday without emotional strife and perhaps you’ll find you have made all the difference to someone else.

I’m all a flutter with the new logo that Sara Williams of Tweaks and Designs bestowed upon me over the weekend. Sara has done several custom themes for some of the Splitcoaststampers.com Bloggers, like Julia Stainton at Belle Papier which was updated two weeks ago, and Lauren Meader’s My Time Blog.

I was really impressed with the way she was able to work within my image challenged theme to provide a logo that fit easily, and managed to capture the spirit of this blog…very cool. Thanks Sara!

Thanks to all who serve and have served.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yK9TDt3Ouo4[/youtube]

Brian Kirsten, a great engineer and a guy whose opinion I really respect pointed me towards a very important article by Niall Harbison entitled “How Much Traffic Does TechCrunch Send You?”  in which he dissects that actual traffic volume which the tech megablog generated for him.

TechCrunch itself is widely attributed to have over 4m rss subscribers alone, on top of the 2m unique site visitors that Compete.com attributes to them.

From Harbison’s post:

As you can see the traffic numbers are fairly small. I say they are small yet the article was popular by Techcrunch standards with over 400 Re tweets yet as you can see the referral traffic is not massive. It’s clear that the majority of people read the site through RSS and very few click through to the actual source of the story. I must say this is how I read Techcrunch too, I rarely look at sites they cover instead scanning the site for latest news.

Okay, that’s readers that actually made it back the the site featured in the article.  There were almost as many retweets on Twitter about the story as there were visits to the link in that story for the company it was about.  That borders on depressing.

(more…)

For the record, I’m the last guy you should get financial or economic advice from.  Even so, I was shocked to find a story in the New York Times yesterday, entitled “Good Bye Reforms of 2002.”  The lead ought to grab you:

Sarbanes-Oxley was passed, almost unanimously, by a Republican-controlled House and a Democratic-controlled Senate. Now a Democratic Congress is gutting it with the apparent approval of the Obama administration.

The House Financial Services Committee this week approved an amendment to the Investor Protection Act of 2009 — a name George Orwell would appreciate — to allow most companies to never comply with the law, and mandating a study to see whether it would be a good idea to exempt additional ones as well.

Some veterans of past reform efforts were left sputtering with rage. “That the Democratic Party is the vehicle for overturning the most pro-investor legislation in the past 25 years is deeply disturbing,” said Arthur Levitt, a Democrat who was chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission under President Bill Clinton. “Anyone who votes for this will bear the investors’ mark of Cain.”

So that’s it.  No more Sarbanes-Oxley Act, no more pesky fiduciary responsibility, no more having to worry about those tiresome investors.

Many of you are saying “so what?”  This I can answer in three words: Enron, Worldcom, Madoff. Surely we all remember those names.  Every single one a case study in corporate greed, each left thousands upon thousands of people financially ruined.  Each case was blamed, fairly or not, on the GOP.  So how is it the Democrats, who I’m always told by the left are steadfastly against corporate greed, are the ones gutting this bill?  Don’t they care about protecting investors, employees, etc.?

The fact is this: they don’t.  Not now, and the next Enron, or the next Worldcom will be entirely their responsibility.  The sad truth is we’re on our own…and we always hve been.  There ain’t no cavalry over that hill and there darn sure isn’t anyone in Washington trying to save us from the next financial debacle.

Now on the other side of the equation, I’ve been hearing a lot lately about how the recession has eased, but has yet to show any job growth at all.   Perhaps the government is quietly trying to make things easier on business in these trying times to enable them to find a way to grow.  It’s clutching for straws, but it’s the only thing I can think of…at least that doesn’t make me want to scream.

So why am I blogging about this? Because other than a single article in the New York Times (kudos to Floyd Norris) there is precious little being broadcast or written about this.

Throw in your own despondent cliche here about history repeating, or old dogs turning tricks, I’m gonna go put what little money I have in a mattress somewhere.