Current Oscar Lama Issues

Jay Wagner

The current economy is in bad shape – at least that’s what all of the pundits tell us. The conventional wisdom in times like these is to put stop loss orders on everything, put everything you can into blue chips, or settle for the safe, low returns of Treasury securities.

I’m here to tell you that the conventional wisdom is foolish.

In the first place, the conventional wisdom is contradictory. You can’t have automatic trades to comply with stop loss orders going on constantly and maintain major holdings in blue chips. Even the blue chips – maybe especially the blue chips – are subject to market volatility. When the economy is bad, inflation becomes a major concern, and the market starts requiring a higher return on investment. At the same time, the bad economy drives sales downward, reducing corporate incomes and, by extension, return on stockholders’ investment. The result is market dissonance that exacerbates existing market volatility. The general trend is for prices to go down, and the easier a security is to trade the more precipitous its price decline tends to be. This is simply a function of supply and demand: more people want out than in, so supply exceeds demand and prices drop.

Supply and demand also accounts for what happens with bonds, notes, and commercial paper. In a difficult economy, fixed income securities are less appealing because of inflation concerns. Here again, people trying to get out of fixed income securities outnumber those trying to get in, so prices go down and both current yield and yield to maturity go up. At the same time, new debt issues of any kind are almost impossible to sell, and, with the rest of the credit market similarly tightened, companies are unable to borrow necessary cash at reasonable rates, forcing them to offer their debt placements at rather deep discounts. The bottom line is, they must raise cash to weather the economic storm, and they will pay handsomely to get it.

You’re seeing it today on every news channel: the prices of securities are declining virtually across the board. Your broker may be telling you to cover everything with stop loss orders and trade, trade, trade. That may be a case of your broker subscribing to the conventional foolishness, or it may be a case of your broker trying to protect his income: after all, commissions come from trades, and your broker lives on commissions. The question I have to ask is why would you want to sell now? It makes about as much sense as buying merchandise at Nieman Marcus to resell at Wal Mart. This is not, I repeat not, the time to sell. The economy is on an express elevator to the bargain basement, to be sure, but history tells us that when it comes to the stock market, what goes down must come up. Knowing that, this is the time to get in on the bargains. That “next Microsoft” that everyone is looking for might be trading for far less than its legitimate value right under your nose right now!

Growing up in Kansas, I was acquainted with a man who had amassed vast holdings of farm and ranch land. He was an eighth grade dropout, and I often wondered how he came to be so wealthy, so I finally asked. “Son,” he said, “Most of my land was bought back during the dust bowl, when farmers and ranchers were selling off their land or bankers were foreclosing and then trying to get what cash they could from the deal. I was just a farmhand back then, but I had a little money saved up, and when land dropped below twenty-five cents an acre I started buying. As the economy started to pick up, I used that land to borrow against and buy more land. By the time the drought was over, I owned almost ten sections [note: there are 640 acres in a section] and hadn’t spent $1,000 to get it.” At the time that we had that conversation (about 1972), his $1,000 investment made between 1930 and 1939 was worth over $3 million, an annualized return on investment of around 25%.

Do you have “a little money saved up” that could be used to pick up the bargains available in the current markets? My friend knew that the drought that caused the dust bowl wouldn’t last forever, and he made a fortune from other people’s panic. Investors are in a panic now, but if you’re smart their panic is your opportunity.

Investments to Avoid

In a struggling economy, investors tend to make the same mistakes over and over, and those mistakes take two forms: running for “safe harbor” and becoming extremely active traders in anything that is going up.

The safe harbor crowd always runs to one of two places, blue chip stocks and Treasury securities. As we have already discussed, blue chips are probably the roughest safe harbor you can go to, rather akin to anchoring in Galveston Bay during Hurricane Ike. Market volatility tends to have a more pronounced effect on blue chips: add the fact that blue chip companies like General Motors, General Electric, and AIG are all fighting for life right now and a run for the blue chips is borrowing trouble rather than escaping it.

Treasury issues are, without a doubt, safe. After all, if the Treasury defaults the money is meaningless anyway. The problem is, this is a “safe” harbor full of purchasing power pirates. The return on Treasury securities rarely keeps pace with inflation in an economic downturn, so while your safe harbor investment may be earning you a return in nominal dollar terms, in real dollar terms you’re losing purchasing power. It doesn’t do much good to earn 3% on your money if prices are going up an average of 6%.

Sadly, many investors who don’t run for safe harbor become speculators, moving money constantly into anything that is going up at the moment. Since most of the market is going down, this all too often drives them to the derivatives market, especially in today’s economy where oil futures have, at times, exceeded $140 per barrel. The problem is, if you’re short at $120 per barrel and the spot market on the settlement date is $140 per barrel, you’ll have to either lose money on an offsetting long position, sell your short at a loss, or have 1,000 barrels of crude setting around that you can part with. On the other hand, if you have a long position for $140 and the spot price is $120, you get to lose money going short or selling the long position at a loss, or you get to take delivery of 1,000 barrels of crude that you’ll lose $20,000 selling on the spot market if you can’t store it and wait.

Some investments, especially derivatives, will go into bubble mode early in an economic downturn, but don’t let that fool you into entering the bubble with them. As any kid who ever chewed bubble gum or blew soap bubbles can tell you, bubbles burst. If your money is in the bubble when it bursts, you can wave goodbye to it as it is scattered on the winds of economic caprice.

Investments to Make

Some companies and industries have proven themselves to be amazingly resilient. Like everything else, their securities are or soon will be selling at bargain basement prices, and if they appear to be struggling the discounts may be extra deep. Do your homework, make sure that they are positioned to bounce back, but if they are, buy while the price is low.

The current debacle started with a meltdown in the sub-prime mortgage market. The result is a large number of foreclosures, with lenders ending up holding real estate when they need cash. As a result, real estate prices are falling, so if you can, this is a good time to buy real estate or invest in companies that are investing in real estate. The prices will go back up, just as they did for my friend who invested in farm and ranch land during the dust bowl.

Many brokers and analysts have an innate fear of high yield (so called “junk”) bonds. Admittedly, some high yields have gone under and become no yields, but as a rule the returns have been in line with the risks, and sometimes a little higher. During an economic downturn, there tend to be two types of high yield bonds on the market: those with something behind them and those with nothing behind them. The former are usually issued by companies that want the capital to invest while the market is down, generally in either income real estate or leveraged buyouts. These tend to be pretty good bets for a sizeable profit in a relatively short period of time, and they offer your investment some diversification while providing at least partial collateral from the assets they invest your money into. The latter are usually issued by companies that are cash strapped and have credit problems, and they’re offering them to raise working capital: as a rule, they’re a bad investment and far more likely to default than the secured high yields.

The best bargains, however, may be in small cap (so called “penny”) stocks, initial public offerings (IPOs), and various kinds of notes, especially those backed with some kind of collateral. Some of these securities (especially the notes) can have some pretty creative terms, but if you understand the terms they can be a good, and often high yield, investment.

However, He Said . . .

While you’re doing all of this bargain basement buying, it doesn’t hurt to put a few safeguards into your portfolio. These can take several forms, as you’ll see.

After spending the first part of this article giving you all of the reasons to avoid the rush to blue chips and Treasury securities, I now need to backtrack just a bit. I’m not going into the famous politician’s gambit that “I was against it before I was for it.” I’m still adamantly opposed to loading your portfolio with volatile blue chips and low yield Treasuries, but having a portion of your portfolio in these securities isn’t a bad thing. The blue chips may recover a little more quickly than the market at large, and the Treasury issues will at least provide a good final position in the event of a major, long-term depression.

There are, of course, other ways to protect your portfolio. As you know, I’m against riding bubbles, especially in the derivatives markets. However, derivatives can be used to hedge your positions. Worried that a rise in interest rates will devalue that investment in mortgage notes? Just hedge the position with Treasury note or Treasury bond futures. For example, one long 10 year Treasury note contract can effectively insure one $100,000 10 year mortgage against excessive value loss due to rising interest rates. This doesn’t tie the two inextricably together, but as 10 years Treasury note rates rise toward the level of the long position, its value increases to cover the value lost by the mortgage note.

Another thing that can help your portfolio is investment grade bonds, especially if they can be converted to common stock. The conversion capability tends to buoy the price some, and the bond income can provide money to cover short-term losses in other areas or help your income weather the economic storm.

You Can Profit with Oscar Lama

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The Role of Fear in This Faltering Economy

By: Danna Schneider

Our economy is definitely going through some “tough times”, as our President George Bush recently confirmed in a speech regarding the floundering economy of today.

A combination of factors have created a very volatile stock market, housing market, increasing inflation and cost of living, and a faltering job market, but one key component of a failing economy plays an intangible role in facilitating and perpetuating economic instability.

That component is human fear. We can’t help it, we’ve evolved with fear as one of our main emotions, and the media and our surroundings have only helped it along by declaring “the sky if falling” with it’s seemingly nonstop doomsday headlines.

Heck, you can’t read your email without seeing the headlines on the side declaring that we are headed for worse times before they get better, costs are skyrocketing, foreclosures are at an all time high, gas prices are astronomical, and basically that everything is working against us right now.

The sky looks very dim indeed if you tune in to the nightly news or happen to be bombarded with all this fearful journalism every day on the internet, which is an increasingly popular portal for getting the news. So, has the media played a part in our faltering economy, or is it really a combination of unfortunate factors, seemingly brought on by events beyond our control?

Well, most people feel the media is partly responsible for making things worse. Take the stock market for example. Fear is the stock market’s worst enemy. When consumer confidence in the economy is low and there are other headlines that are less than favorable in the financial, retail, and last but not least, housing sectors, the stock market suffers dramatic volatility.

In fact, one of the hardest hit in the subprime and credit fiasco, whom also was recently bailed out by the federal government and JP Morgan, another financial heavy, Bear Stearns, acknowledges that fear is it’s worst enemy. They insist that their financials are still intact, but rumors that were rampant about the company’s imminent collapse forced shares down to their lowest levels in almost eleven years.

Many financial institutions are experiencing nosedives in their stock prices, and have also slashed dividends to preserve working capital, a move that is said to create a domino effect in the banking industry where other banks follow suit. This only forces prices lower on stocks, and makes it harder for them, and consequently, the market, to recover.

Most financial analysts agree now that we are in a recession, but some are still reluctant to call that card, saying that a recession may still be averted, and that we are merely in an economic downturn. I for one, believe we are smack in the middle of a recession, and I believe that part of the reason for that is the fear that is being spread about the dire straits the US economy is in, and the sense of hopelessness conveyed by these doomsday headlines.

Fear perpetuates a sense of helplessness and “waiting it out”, as well as inspires investors to back their money out of stocks and other investments, and put them into cash accounts, which only puts us further into recession. For those that have iron stomachs, it’s actually a great time to be an investor, as there are some good, solid companies selling for well below their book values and their true worth right now.

That’s not to say there also aren’t a lot of stinkers too, but if you practice due diligence in researching their individual financials and balance sheets, you may be sitting pretty when this recession is over and the consumer confidence that is so key to a healthy economy has returned.

Fear and Oscar Lama Faltering Economy

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How to Market in a Really Bad Economy

By Louis Bernstein

Eight marketing ideas to help your small business during a bad economy.

Even if your company is doing well during a down economy, you need to make plans for customers who may start cutting back. They key is to shift your marketing from image-oriented marketing to direct response, measurable advertising.

If your business is already feeling the effects of a weakening economy here are some strategies you can use to market in a bad economy.

1. Place your focus on more direct forms of revenues versus “image advertising.” It’s time to show good, measurable results. Coupon redemption programs and the use of promo codes can be very effective. When the economy is down everyone is looking for bargains. With coupons and promo codes you also get to track what’s working and what isn’t.

2. Learn more about your customers needs. Surveys don’t have to cost anything. If you have an email list, you can build a quick survey to send out using Survey Monkey. It’s free and easy. You can also put the survey on your web site and offer something free for people to take the survey. Since you may not be able to advertise everything during a bad economy, it’s smart to know where to put your money.

3. Call in favors from your vendors. You need to get the biggest bang for your buck. I’m not suggesting hitting up your vendors for such large discounts that it places an undue strain on them. However, get what you can while keeping your relationship good and making sure they stay in business to serve you throughout the downturn.

4. Not all customers are created equal. See who has purchased the most from you and make sure you stay close to them. As your best customers, they should be entitled to any perks you can afford.

5. Stress ROI. All of your campaigns need to convey how your customer will profit from your product. And you need to be as certain as possible that your advertising campaign will pay for itself. When you start a business you obviously need to watch your pennies. However, don’t abandon this practice as you grow your business.

6. Test. Test. Test. Segment your list and try different subject lines, headlines and sub heads. Try different offers. The key is to find the one combination that hits the sweet spot and use that one. This point brings us back to the importance of measuring your results. With limited funds when starting a business you need to know which message gets you the best results.

7. Try to “convert” everyone that comes to your web site. By convert I mean capture their name, company, email, and phone number. Get this valuable marketing information by offering your visitors valuable content. Reports and videos are great things to use. Think about any content and information that would help your customer or prospect succeed - especially in a bad economy.

8. It’s time for family values. When hard times hit, people tend to go back to the nest. Try to position your product in warm, fun, family-oriented scenes. Even if your product doesn’t quite fit that image or is more business oriented, every product will affect someone. The image could even be a coming together of office workers around your product. “Paint the picture” how your product makes a warm, positive impact on someone or something.

Oscar Lama in a Really Bad Economy

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Small Jobs Stimulate the Economy

By Debra Yergen

A bad economy can provide a great opportunity to put a few “principles” on hold. First Lady Michelle Obama made news — and made a lot of mothers proud — when she announced that her daughters would still be making their own beds in the White House. Children should learn to participate in household chores, and those who don’t often grow up to be terrible spouses who seldom pick up their own socks much less make the bed or vacuum.

All good parents know that children need incremental responsibilities. But in this economy, there are a lot of adults who would welcome some extra hours a week working a side gig to bring in extra cash to keep their own families fed, clothed and taken care of. At the same time, there are a lot of nonprofit organizations in need of volunteers — even the tiniest volunteers willing to sit and talk to a patient, fold towels or stuff envelopes.

What if every family with full-time employment, and $25 or more extra dollars available a week, were to hire a family in need of some extra cash to help with cleaning, yard work, organizing or errands for a couple of months while they found steady employment? Could small jobs like this really stimulate the economy? Well, yes, actually any job that keeps money in motion stimulates the economy. [Be sure to check IRS guidelines. The cutoff for hiring household help is $660 per year before the employer needs to pay employment taxes on the person providing help.] You don’t want to find yourself fined for trying to help someone in need.

If you’re reading this and you need to make some extra money, do you have friends or family who could use your time, help or expertise? With the job landscape changing, many people are returning to trades. Experienced workers 55+ are perfectly suited to offer apprenticeships to younger workers who are looking to develop skills to fall back on.

And of course there’s the matter of discretionary income. The economy has given a one-two punch to service industry workers who rely on tips for a significant portion of their income. Instead of going out to eat twice a week, what if you were to go out only once but double your tip? If your bill for two people is $30.50 and you usually add $4.50 twice a week, what if you only went once but tipped $10? You’d save tremendously and your server would feel very appreciated.

Indeed, there are small things everyone can do every week to make a big difference. If you’re in a position to give a little extra help, you’ll make a real difference to a family in need. If you find yourself needing some extra income, you might be surprised who would be willing to help out right in your inner circle. And the biggest surprise of all — everyone wins. Because small jobs really do stimulate the economy.

Oscar Lama About Jobs And Economy

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Selling Skills For Today’s Economy!

By Bob Urichuck

In today’s economy sales professionals need to be equipped with the appropriate selling skills, following a proven selling system or sales process, in order to succeed and meet their sales targets.

They can no longer afford to carry on with traditional selling skills of doing dog and pony shows, feature and benefit dumps, or hit and run closes.

Today’s economy demands engaging selling skills, not telling selling skills. Engaging selling skills attract and engage prospects into personal and business conversations - Personal conversations to build rapport and trust; Business conversations to qualify opportunities to do business.

Engaging sales skills starts with a desire to create relationships. Keep in mind that people buy from people, people they like and they trust. Once trust is established, a relationship starts. That is the sales skill foundation to a sales transaction.

To build that rapport, or trust, requires conversational selling skills focused on the prospect, not on you, your company or your products. The selling skill required here is to show a genuine personal interest in the person in front of you. You do that by asking questions, questions that they would like to respond to and talk about.

So, what do people like to talk about?

People like to talk about themselves, their families, hobbies, job, etc. These are more personal conversations. The selling skills required here are asking questions, listening and using your body language to show interest.

Your job is to get them to open up and to keep talking. The more they talk, the more you listen, the more you learn and the more they like and trust you.

Mind you there are also other selling skill techniques to build rapport. One of the best rapport building sales skills comes from Nero Linguistic programming (NLP) where mirroring and matching body language, tonality and words enhances rapport building quickly and magically.

You will know when your rapport selling skill has been established, just by the way the prospect has opened up with you. When they get to the point where they can’t stop talking, you know you got the rapport selling skill that would allow you to move onto the next step in the selling system, or sales process.

With rapport, trust and relationship starting, you can then move from personal to business conversation, by simply interjecting another question - Bill, I really appreciate what you are sharing with me, but how much time have you set aside for our meeting?

With the answer to this sales skill question, a new sort of business conversation starts. Your time allocated is either confirmed or extended, either of which matter, as it is the next sales skill question that will make the difference.

“Bill, what is it that you would like to accomplish over the next X minutes?”

Most sales people only think of their objective, and not that of the customers. It is the customer’s objective that is most important, so let’s get it out of them first. Then we can add our’s into the scenario.

For example, they could reply with, “I would like to learn more about your company and it’s products or services.”

You can then reply with an inclusion of your objective. For example, “that’s great Bill, as I too would like to learn more about your company to determine if there is an opportunity for us to do business together or not. Is it ok if we ask each other questions?

Do you mind if I take some notes?

Getting permission to ask questions, and to take notes, is also an important selling skill. It shows interest, and makes the prospect feel important.

Today’s Oscar Lama Economy Skills

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Five Steps For Sales Success in a Slow Economy

By Doug Dvorak

A slow economy is a difficult time for business and no salesperson welcomes it. As total business volume slumps, triggering apprehension of deeper recession and pessimism and uncertainty can prevail. However, it is an inevitable part of the economic cycle and businesses should learn to cope with it and salespeople should develop a strategy to survive and thrive. They should pursue only the best possible sales opportunities despite the hardships. Weak and inefficient salespeople are affected most in a slow economy and some even get wiped out, because all the negative news affects their attitude. Interestingly, many salespeople and businesses not only survive when the economy is slow, they also thrive. In addition to having quality products and services they follow some basic sales strategies to succeed in a difficult market which you too can follow:

1- Shift and Readjust Focus: The market composition changes when the economy is slow. Consumer demand and preferences change. Astuteness lies in studying and understanding the changes in the market and in consumer’s behavior. For example, a shoe manufacturer will notice that during a slump, consumers forego purchasing expensive designer shoes. But the sales of moderately priced shoes meant for the average consumer will purchase these brands unabated. The shoe manufacturer will be better off shifting focus to low end and moderately priced shoes rather than concentrating on high end - designer shoes. Similarly, financial and investment companies will find that the shares of certain industries still remain high despite an economic slow down. Industries related to food and other products that are basic to the needs of people will remain upbeat in a slump. Campbell’s Soup’s stock price has not depreciated significantly during this recession. The gaming industry has actually experienced growth during the current ongoing recession. Some computing companies haven’t yet been introduced to the current recession. IBM for example, has registered growth for the second successive quarter. Investors can shift their focus to these industries. Even some companies that have experienced a decline in the value of their stocks will be worth investing in if they show enough promise of bouncing back soon.

2- More Thrust on Sales: When the economy is running smoothly or booming many salespeople become mere order takers and are not delivering value to their clients. There is hardly any skill required to push sales as the brand name of the product and huge consumer demand automatically result in sales. But when the economy slows down, consumer demand dips for a large range of products. That’s when sharp sales skills should be used to keep sales figure up. The smart ones succeed in selling reasonably well despite the hard times. Organizations should reassess their sales strategies as well as the efficiency of their sales teams. There may be a need for weeding out non-performers from the sales team and rewarding the performers. Companies should have a well defined and effective sales process in place. All salespeople should adhere to the sales process and apply every ethical sales method that is known to them to get a sale. The possibility of online sales should be fully explored, as Forrester Research points out, that online consumers will spend $3000-4000 per year and their desire to spend is unlikely to be affected by recession.

3- Emphasis on Customer Service: In good economic times you may get away with poor customer service. But during tough economic times a single slighted customer could prove to be very costly. Customers expect prompt service and due attention, especially when they have come forward and chosen to buy your product. Organizations should remember that the transaction doesn’t end when they deliver the product and receive payments. It is just the beginning of a process that may require further rendering of service to the customer. A happy customer invariably becomes a repeat customer. A company can save money and effort by concentrating more on existing customers through impeccable customer service.

4- Slashing Prices: One of the weapons of fighting a recession is slashing prices of products and services as much as possible to stay competitive attract new buyers and gain market share, while still making profits. Microsoft has slashed its prices of the Xbox consoles to stay ahead in the booming gaming market. To compete with Nintendo and Sony and capture a sizeable chunk of the gaming market during the holiday season, the decision to cut prices seemed very logical for Microsoft.

Sales and Oscar Lama 5 Steps

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Current Issues with the Global Economy

By: dane

Though the housing bubble deflated about two years ago, its true effects are only now beginning to emerge. In late 2006, when the economy first began to show signs of weakness in the housing market, most economists predicted that a recession was very unlikely, and that any downturn in real estate prices would be localized and mild. In reality, a global downturn is now a real threat, with the final price of the credit crunch projected to exceed $1 trillion dollars.

Not only have falling house prices in the US spread to other markets abroad, they have contributed to massive losses in other areas of lending such as credit cards, and the financial industry, which is now reeling from the US government bailout of Bear Stearns. What does this mean for emerging economies like China and India? In the short term, volatility seems to be the order of the day, with India’s fledgling exchanges rocked by jittery investors. Until financial centers and investors can regain confidence, market conditions will be exaggerated. Early trading also plays a psychological role for investors, as news developments impact Asia before Wall Street opens.

The US and the UK both face difficult home pricing corrections which will continue to hamper growth. Most homeowners expect, if not to make a profit, not to sell their houses at a loss, which is a difficult pill to swallow. And if they can’t sell their homes for what they think they’re worth, then waiting it out contributes to prices falling, thus exacerbating the problem.

While government intervention has been exceptionally forthcoming in efforts to preserve confidence in financial markets, less attention has been given to homeowners who are being foreclosed on over the next year, which is only so low because of robust growth in Asia.

Another prospect which looms over every government is the specter of inflation, which threatens to overtake the slumping economy as the number one priority for the Federal Reserve and other central banks, who have had to take extreme action to prevent further liquidity losses. The Fed has sold off over $100 billion in auctions and lowered interest rates five times in an attempt to lower mortgage interest rates, but confidence will remain shaky until the full extent of investment bank’s sub-prime exposure is realized.

Current Oscar Lama  Issues

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Success Through Your Economy

By Dorothy M. Neddermeyer, PhD

When you are resourceful in your endeavors you can look over the capital you have available to you in the many aspects of your life. You will recognize that your resources are limitless and you might feel the weight of abundance pressing you to make good use of them. When you are creative in the manner in which you manage your time, energy and money, your plans will be met with great success. Using your skills and talents with life’s uncertainties inventively and frugally can help ensure that you increase the value of your economy.

Attaining and maintaining success is easy when you are willing to employ a measure of economy in the manner in which you utilize your resources. Many people become star struck as his/her level of prosperity rises, and consequently she/he might believe that there has been a license granted to be free with the accumulated assets. Yet, your continuing success is dependent on your ability to think and act judiciously and thriftily when dealing with the blessings afforded you by the universe. The world’s third wealthiest person, Warren Buffett, models this philosophy as he still lives in the same modest (by most billionaire’s standards) house he purchased for $31,500 in 1958, complete with clothesline in the backyard.

When you are choosy in all areas of your life, you are more apt to hone in on those choices that will both enrich your experience and help you build a strong resource foundation that will eventually protect you in lean times. Your inventive approach to the distribution of your assets will help you preserve the security you worked hard to attain.

Oscar Lama Success Keys

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Better Marketing in a Bad Economy

By Michael Sieber

A friend and I were talking the other day about the economy and how businesses can better market themselves during a slowdown. He told me a story that I think is relevant to businesses no matter what the economy is like.

A flower shop recently expanded and put a store in our little downtown area. My friend (an advertising sales rep) stopped in to chat and asked how the business had been going. The owner said that things were fair, but it wasn’t going as expected.

So my buddy asked her what kind of marketing she was doing. Well, she was doing everything she could. She ran an ad in the paper, but it didn’t get much response.

That’s it: one ad and no response.

My friend then asked her if she was planning any grass roots marketing. The shop owner had no clue what he meant by that, so he explained.

You’ve got the courthouse right across the street. There are handfuls of men who work there - men who are “too busy” to remember that Valentine’s day is coming up. Why aren’t you going over to the courthouse with coupons for 10% off a dozen roses? Or better yet, let the guys know that you can have a gift basket containing flowers, candy, teddy bear, and a card ready to take home to the wife or girlfriend when they get done with work on Friday.

The shop owner was blown away. That was a great idea! She’d never thought about that.

And therein lies the problem that many struggling businesses face. They think that marketing begins and ends with putting an ad in the paper or on the radio, and if that doesn’t work, they throw their hands up in frustration because…well..they’ve done everything they can do.

They neglect to see the opportunities that exist if they get out and put themselves in front of their potential customers rather than waiting for their customers to find them.

Oscar Lama Economy Issues

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5 Critical Components of a Vibrant Economy - Back to the Basics

By Joel Barrett

Much of the recent bad economic news has been blamed on troubles in the housing market and the banking and credit industries. While these problems are serious, the more fundamental and insidious economic problem is the lack of knowledge about what exactly creates a vibrant, thriving economy.

The formulation of effective policy starts with the essential question: what is required for a nation to create and sustain wealth?

Justice on All Levels

Before any economy can be talked about, there must be justice. The investor must be able to trust an organization to behave responsibly and wisely with their investment. The retail store must be able to trust visitors to act cordially, respectfully, and honestly (e.g. no shoplifting). Individuals must have “confidence” in the goods they are buying.

A nation with any economy at all must involve people who can trust each other, and the products and services they offer. This trust in the laws of fairness must be enforced justly, otherwise trust erodes and fear prevents ventures from ever taking place. Once people can trust each other, there is room for teamwork.

Trust is generated by justice. Justice must exist before any economy can take place. The American economy has been strong until now for many reasons, not the least of which is the trust generated by excellent law enforcement. While law enforcement has been very effective on the grassroots level, it seems to have waned on the large scale.

A Wise People

Skilled labor is required to pull minerals from the earth and turn them into goods. This wisdom, this skill, is required to accomplish great ventures. Auto makers and oil refineries are networked mazes of complex systems kept running by very wise and skilled workers who are well paid for their expertise. Agriculture, Aerospace, Manufacturing, Investing, and every single economic sector without exception requires skilled labor.

Without skilled labor, a nation must either return to the most basic forms of agriculture or import skilled laborers to run the complex systems. America is now noticing a high influx of imported labor (ask Whirlpool) and my personal experience has seen employers wondering where America’s upcoming skilled labor market is going to come.

A Loving People

Once complex systems are in place, wisdom must be passed from generation to generation in order for the populace to compete. Rather than reinventing the wheel, the new generation must quickly learn the techniques and protocols that have already been learned and implemented by the previous generation.

There must be a caring relationship between generations to impart wisdom on how to build, maintain, and improve complex systems. It seems at the moment that there is a lot of ladder climbing but not a lot of discipleship going on in Corporate America.

A Strong Production Base

Physical wealth begins with taking minerals from the ground and then turning those minerals into something valuable and useful. This process can be called production, the generation of products. Agriculture and Mining pull minerals from the ground and manufacturing turns those minerals into products. All other economic fields depend on these.

As the American economy shuns these values in favor of services, entertainment, or any other economic sector, there will be less and less of a foundation for the economy to stand on. All taxes and burdens placed on these sectors exponentially impede all others.

Conclusion

Economies are fundamentally human qualities and values. As those qualities and values change, economies will shift accordingly. If the qualities and values are dead wrong, the economies will not function correctly. If the qualities and values are right, they will thrive vibrantly.

Oscar Lama Economy Basics

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