Liar, Liar; Planet on Fire —
Skating On The Thin Ice
of Economic Chaos
YOWUSA.COM, 11-March-02
Marshall Masters
…Continued
Oops, the "frictional ignorance" beloved of the pharmaceutical oligopoly has gone boom. Not because American government passed socialized medicine,
increased Medicare payroll deductions or created new laws with high-level "protected" opinions. Rather, the government has in its own shame chosen to
look the other way and best of all, this information age fair trade solution didn't cost American taxpayers a single penny.
But what about younger, healthier Americans who need a first home more than cheap way to fill their life-extending prescriptions? For them, mortgages
are just as important as affordable blood pressure medicine.
There was a time when getting mortgage was like running an evil gauntlet. First, you walked into a bank with its impressive marble and wood interior.
You then sat in front of a large, expensive mahogany desk and fidgeted as you handed over your application along with a non-refundable application
processing fee to a blasé mortgage banker or broker. After weeks of agonizing grief, the answer finally comes and when the final offer was pushed
back across the expansive top of that impressive mahogany desk, the original offer is nowhere to be found. Rather, you were picked apart for the smallest
knits so that you could be assessed a bevy of fees, points, in addition to a higher interest rate.
Your choice at that point was to either take the deal knowing you'd just been bent over a financial barrel, or leave your processing fee on the table, and
start the same process anew with yet another blasé mortgage banker or broker. No matter where you went, you knew you'd be victimized by the
"frictional ignorance" inherent in the system so you just lumped it, and took the offer.
Then in the mid-nineties, along came the Internet. Now, the doubletalk and gobbledygook that permeated the process of getting one's first home mortgage has been swept away in favor of simple plain language that
everyone can understand.
Ditech.com
First Mortgages
 Competitive Rates: Our convenient and speedy process
enables us to offer some of the lowest rates in the business for all types of home loans. We challenge you to find lower rates and fees from any other lender out there!
No Surprises:
We have a fixed, flat fee structure that will never change during your loan process. No Obligation: No fees prior to closing and no
cancellation charges give you the freedom to choose with no obligations. If you are ever dissatisfied with any aspect of your loan - the process, the interest rate, or the service you receive from us - you are free to
cancel. No cost. No obligation. No regrets. Rate-Lock Policy: Secure your rate with a 30-, 60-, or 90-day lock.
These three examples show that fair trade not only works, but also that it will continue to shape our future as well. A future where the middlemen will have
less-and-less to do with our lives, as time marches on.
Take heart because the economic future is not dark, as the prognosticators would lead us to believe. Rather, it is an enlightened and more compassionate future where the traditional values of honesty, value and
fairness can once again flourish without the self-serving impediment of dishonest middlemen.
Is this idealistic and unworkable? It was most definitely so in the past but not in a future where the world is now awash in the weapons of mass destruction.
Even the common man now is beginning to understand that we can no longer exploit others with smug impunity. Never before has this wisdom applied
more to our political and economic health — what goes around comes around. We must choose a more enlightened path or we will surely die from our own greed.
So then, there we have the past and the future -- but what of the present and our economic vulnerability to catastrophe?
We Are So Very Vulnerable Now
As we move towards the fair trade enlightenment of information economy we are propelled by the very weakness in our economic system caused by the
dying gasps of unscrupulous industrial age middlemen and their political benefactors.
During Clinton's "It's the economy stupid," era it seemed as though America through its great productive capabilities had managed to create new wealth.
We created money and wealth and we were in love with our retirement plans.
Now, we see that corporations didn't grow that much. Rather, they just hired prestigious, yet now corrupt accounting firms like Arthur Andersen to pad their
books with voodoo accounting practices sanctioned by the Clinton administration. But let's not hang all of this on the Democrats. The Republicans consumed their fair at the trough as well.
Consequently, the world economy now has the appearance of substance, but when challenged by an unforeseen global catastrophe the world economy collapse upon itself in much the same manner as the World Trade Center
towers did on 9-11.
This global catastrophe can be initially triggered by a natural event such as an asteroid impact, or a man-made event such as nuclear war erupting between
India and Pakistan. When that trigger event happens, a regression of similarly catastrophic events will grow from it in much the same way rings of lake water race outward from a thrown stone.
Setting aside the misery this will cause in other countries, how will this affect us here in America? Or more specifically, where are we most vulnerable aside from the use of weapons of mass destruction.
The next time you go to the grocery market to buy a box of breakfast cereal keep the following explanation of the Supply Chain Management in mind and
why it could starve you to death faster than if you lived in a 3rd world country.
The Deadly Blowback of Supply Chain Management
When we look back on the go-go nineties and what were told was the longest running economic expansion in the history of America we find ourselves
stretching our heads and wondering "where did it all come from and where did it go." Figuring out where it went is easy. Read the financial newspaper
headlines, and listen to the sketchy interviews of reluctant politicians. So, let's focus on where the appearance of prosperity came from.
Of course there are the many gold price manipulation theories, which seem pretty reasonable at face value, but one of the largest appearance of
substance funding sources is never mentioned in the media and it is called Supply Chain Management. I know, because I've made my living writing about it for close to decade.
Depending on which side of the producer- consumer matrix you're positioned, you'll be familiar Supply Chain Management terms like Just In Time
Manufacturing (JIT) and Enterprise Resource Management (ERP). What all of these do, is to simply eliminate the need to maintain inventory in advance of
possible orders or sales and her is how it looks to the common man without all the usual technobabble.
First let's assume you have a craving for corn flakes, and so you go to the grocery market to buy a box of breakfast cereal. When you go to the store,
the shelves are bursting with cereal choices of every possible fancy. When compared with the bread lines of Soviet Russia, our cereal laden market
shelves show the world that we're an economic force. (As though this is on your mind when you snatch a box of corn flakes and head for the check out.)
At the checkout stand, the clerk runs the cereal box over a scanner, which picks up the bar code. The same is immediately rung up and after you've
paid for your cereal the computer in the register sends a message to the back office computer in the grocery store telling it that the store inventory is now down one box of corn flakes.
The back office computer, in turn, relays that message onto the computer in the regional buying office for the grocery store chain, which relays it on to the
appropriate wholesaler, and so on, until it finally arrives at the computer in the home office of the corn flake cerebral company itself. That computer then
adds one more box to its production schedule and orders the amount of corn needed to manufacture more corn flakes.
The amazing thing is that all of this has taken place before you even opened the box to enjoy your first bowlful of cereal. Why? The computers use
pre-defined business rules that take the typical buying and ordering decisions out of the hands of humans. This in turn greatly speeds the process.
Given that all these computers, software and armies of programmers and operators are extremely expensive, why have companies gone to all this
expense to speed the process of ordering a box of corn flakes? In a word, "time."
Before the days of automated supply chain
management, all of the ordering systems relied on
good old sluggish and inefficient humans.
Consequently, if the corn flake manufacturer wanted
to make sure that their coveted and hard-earned
positions on the grocery store shelf were to be
preserved, it could not afford to let the store run
out of corn flakes.
You're Not Alone! Join with Like-minded
Others on the Planet X Town Hall
So, the manufacture would create a 90-day supply of corn flakes and distribute it throughout the supply chain. No matter how inefficient the humans
were, they could never be so inefficient as to squander a supply chain stocked with 90 days worth of corn flakes. The problem with that was the cost of
manufacturing and inventorying that much product for several months at a time.
What made computer automation affordable was that it could replace capital-intensive 90-day inventories, with a much less expense to maintain 90-hour inventory.
As companies automated and switched from 90-day inventories to 90-hour inventories, they freed huge amounts of capital and credit for other things.
This transference of substance along with several other factors is what helped to fuel the apparent wealth showered upon during the Clinton era. Simply put,
we took our substance out inventory and spent it like drunken sailors.
So where does this leave us know?
Let's assume an asteroid impact in the Middle East triggers a nuclear exchange and the resulting wars cut off our supply of oil. While American
hubbies are digging bunkers in their back yards, Mom and the kids are racing to bank to withdraw money, only to learn that the banks have capped the
amount of cash they can withdraw. Next stop, the grocery store, which after a few days is beginning to remind everyone of those pictures in Life Magazine with the empty Soviet food stores and long lines.
 Meanwhile, terrorists have no doubt figured that the
unforeseen impact event was an American plot despite the impassioned pleas of astronomers worldwide. So, they bomb the main railroad control center for the entire US, which really causes a problem.
Because all the manual rail switches (used by inefficient humans) were removed by the railroads in favor of centrally controlled automated switches,
the nation's freight trains are now sitting idle as railway workers frantically work to resolve the jam. Meanwhile, the freight cars carrying much of nations
90-hour supply of corn flakes and other foodstuffs are now sitting on various rail sidings as the product perishes.
Will this all sort itself out in time? Of course, but not before economic chaos ensues as hungry people panic.
This 90-hour vulnerability to disaster is the terrible price we've paid for all the money that was both saved and squandered with automated supply chain management.
Where Do We Go From Here?
We must accept the fact that the shortsighted industrial age thinking that has led us to this terrible period of economic vulnerability is also propelling us
towards an enlightened economic future. It is merely the way of things.
As individuals we must ask ourselves, "am I satisfied with 90-hour safety margin, or will I be self-reliant and set out to rebuild my own 90-day safety
margin just as my grandparents, great grandparents and so on have done for ages?"
And while you're at it, the next time you hand your credit card to a store clerk ask him or her, "As an enlightened member of the information economy, I
would like to know if anyone was unfairly exploited in order to make this product?"
|
