You're hoping for a BAILOUT??

The United States Supreme Court heard argument in a case this week and free enterprise and capitalism are at stake. The case is about a lawsuit that mutual fund investors filed against the funds advisors, claiming that the fees charged by the advisors were “too high.”

They rely on a 1970 amendment to the Federal Anvestment Company act that not to accept excessive compensation. The amendment gives investors the power to enforce the duty in Court.

The problem is that the sets law no standard by which a mutual fund advisor can tell whether he is going to be sued or not. He leaves it to lawsuits (this one now five years old) and the courts to sort through the dispute. This is terribly inefficient.

There are over 8000 mutual funds available to an investor. Moreover, any investor can go online to see the fees paid to advisers and directors. If the investor thanks the fees are too high love they can exercise their voluntary free will and not purchase shares in the fund. It is absurd to think that the government should have any role in regulating mutual fund adviser fees. The free market already protects investors.

What if next time they seek to regulate the fees you charge in your business? What if it fixes the prices of the goods you sell — the goods that consumer voluntarily purchases from you at a price that he deems to be in his best interest?

According to this morning’s Wall Street Journal, the health care bill currently on the table would appoint a “health choices commissioner” who will decide what counts as “essential benefits” in an insurance contract and which would require all insurance policies to have these benefits.

An insurance company should be able to create a contract that offers whatever benefits it wants. The consumer is then free to accept the contract at the price offered or not.

Its that simple. Imagine if the government came into your store and required you to sell certain goods to everyone who entered…whether or not they wanted the good and whether or not you could make a profit on the goods.

No one would think that situation a proper use of government power.

This morning’s Wall Street Journal reports that GMAC financial services is asking the government for another bailout of up to $5.6 billion. Here we go again.

This is yet another example, if our government ascedes to the request, of the government taking by force, from the producers, money to selectively help one industry. You would think that they would have figured out by now that tripling the national deficit by bankrupting the future isn’t the way to grow the economy.

Here’s how you grow the economy: get the government out of the way. Reduce or eliminate mindless regulation that slows the growth of small businesses. Reduce the confiscatory tax system that says to “the producers” the better you do the more we take.

I recently spoke to a young lady whose husband is a small business entrepreneur who was trying to navigate the District of Columbia’s byzantine regulatory system just to be able to establish his business there in order that he could generate income for his family and higher others to work for him. She told me that she had spent a day and a half trying to figure out all of the things that needed to be done just to get this rather simple business “approved” by the government.

If the reduction in regulation and taxation of small businesses took place in each small business was unable to hire one additional person who would cure the unemployment problem. The answer certainly is not to fund GMAC and its ilk with my money.

I am generally surprised that most of the stores I frequent actually don’t know my name. I’m talking about the specialty businesses like the running store or the bird feed store. My family frequents these types of stores all the time yet they do no real tracking of the money we spend. Therefore, when it comes time to spend another dollar or another hour on marketing they don’t go back to their own customer list but they buy and an ad to attract the next new customer. This is eight times as expensive as sending me a marketing piece to get me to come back into the store to spend a little more.This is a real miss allocation of resources. It begins with their not having a decent customer database into which they can record all of my preferences and buying habits. This way they could know when it was time to pitch me on a new pair of shoes or another bag of bird food. They would also know if I suddenly stopped coming to the store and they could reach out and ask why.

Business owners should know who their best customers and clients are in order that they can discriminate in their favor. They should treat these highly valued customers better. Contact them more frequently and make them different offers. Someone who has spent money with you once will do so again and again until you disappoint them but you cannot assume that they will even remember who you are just because they’ve been in your store a bunch of times before.

The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that the American Booksellers Association is asking the Department of Justice to “investigate” the book price war now underway between Wal-Mart and Amazon and Target.

Their complaint? The small independent bookstores cannot compete with the low prices of the mega–companies.

This is ridiculous. Companies like Target and Wal-Mart and Amazon achieved the position in the marketplace that they have by hard work, planning, accepting risk and creating value for their customers. It is not the purpose of government to protect their “competition.” In fact, it is immoral for the independent booksellers to ask for relief. Besides, the relief they seek is in fact higher prices for consumers. What kind of a deal is that?

The independent booksellers, if they want to survive, must figure out how to create value for their customers or they need to invest their time and resources into another business. The last thing on their list should be whining to the government for protection

There was an article in the Washington Post that about a week ago in the “Jobs” section of the Sunday paper that sought to answer this question: Who do you call when your boss bans cell phones?

This is a question and answer column in the Post by columnist Lily Garcia. Her answer was shocking.

Basically, she identified this as a “problem boss” who needed to be dealt with either by a union pressure or by some sort of a lawsuit. She called it “dehumanizing and demoralizing to be subjected to such absolute rules under the guise of efficiency or fairness.”

This is nuts.

A business owner invests his time, energy, and money in a business to create a profit for himself and financial security for his family. A business owner does not exist for the benefit of the employees. If a business owner decides to ban cell phones from the workplace, this is his absolute right. What Ms. Garcia missed in her article is that the option that the employee has is to quit.

If enough employees quit as a result of the policy, and perhaps the owner will rethink the policy. However, the employee always has the free choice to remain under the “rules of engagement” set by the employer or to seek employment elsewhere.

OK, Ben, how do you get it all done? You have seven children, are adopting two more, run three businesses and every time I see you its on a sport field.

Answer: Well, proper mindset is so much more important than being the best lawyer in town. For me, it’s even more important. Having a proper mindset allows you to assess and value your own time and then guard it with ferocity. People say I’m a jerk with my time.

I am.

Quite simply: I don’t tolerate people wasting my time.

Here’s something else: I’m a huge fan of my personal mindset coach, Rem Jackson. He’s taught me more about managing my own personal life and managing three businesses than I ever learned in my first 45 years or so of life. Not just taught. Anyone can teach. I’d say that Rem is a “nudge” or a “nagger,” constantly in my face to keep to good habits and shun both the old ways of doing things and, frankly, old friends that I now view as Eeyores.

So Rem plays a major role in my lawyer marketing conferences because neither (1) marketing nor (2) mastery of the law will get you to the goal line without effective and ruthless management of yourself and your staff. Rem is the nation’s expert on this. He is the “coaches’ coach.”

There is a wonderful defense of capitalism in the latest issue of Forbes magazine. Look for the issue that has “the top 400 richest people in America” on it. Steve Forbes wrote the essay. Its about four pages long.
I challenge you to go our and read it and to try to rebut what he says. I’d be interested in hearing the rebuttal.

Capitalism built America in to what it is today and we need to return to less government regulation. Don’t let politics, (including what both conservatives and liberals do to thwart capitalism) get in the way

The Washington Post’s Michelle Singletary has a column in today’s paper demonizing the overdraft fees that banks charge to customers who spend more money than they have.

Here are some phrases she uses:

“financial institutions are preying on the carelessness of their customers”
“the government has a right to rein in an industry practice that in many cases has become predatory by design, allowing customers to overdraw their accounts.”

She describes “a troubling trend that just won’t die: the financial industry continues to greatly profit from consumer’s love affair with their plastic.”

“This issue should be of concern because many of those who are paying for overdrafts are doing so at a time when they are least able to afford the service.”

“Financial institutions have crossed the lines of fairness.”

So, Ms. Singletary would use the “heavy hand of government” to regulate and reduce the profits of a business.

Again.

Crazy.

By what moral right does a government sacrifice one entity (in this case a business and its shareholders) for another?

Here’s the solution. Don’t ask for a debit card. No one forces you to get one. No one forces you to use one.

Use cash. If you don’t have enough money don’t buy something.

No one is forcing the consumer to be stupid and the government should not use its power to reduce bank profits. Banks can’t “make” people do stupid things. People DECIDE to do stupid things.

I’ve just finished reading a great book, Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism Is the Solution and Not the Problem, by Jay Richards. For me, it helps to out the “struggle” between capitalism and the Bible.

In the book, Richards debunks many of the arguments against capitalism and he demonstrates, time and time again, why an economic system built on capitalism is both moral and, in fact, the best builder of economic wealth for all of the citizens of a country.

I’m going to paraphrase what Richards says are the four questions we must ask about any social policy, particularly and social policy that someone wants to change by fiat (e.g. cash for clunkers, health care reform, etc.)

Here are the questions:

1. Is what we perceive to be true actually true? If they say 46 million people are uninsured we must ask where are they getting this number from; what does it represent; who counted? If someone says the earth is getting warmer, we ask “how do you know–what are you measuring.” Critical thinkers always challenge the assumptions to at least accurately define the problem before trying to “solve” it.

2. If what we perceive to be true is actually true, is it something “bad” that we need to fix? If it were accurate that 46 million people are uninsured but this didn’t mean that they were lacking in health care, the 46 million is no longer “bad.” We can swing back to the policy debates before the economy tanked on a pyramid of bad loans….was it necessarily a “bad” thing that so many people did not own their own homes?

3. If we find that what we perceive to be true is actually true AND bad, then is it our current policy that is the CAUSE of the true and bad situation? As Richards puts it, if the earth is getting warmer and we decide that this is a bad thing is it man who is causing the trend. (Who caused the warming or cooling the last time when man was not around???)

4. If we find that what we perceive to be bad is actually true AND bad and CAUSED by policy then IS the CHANGE to policy being recommended (forced down our throats, sometimes) going to cure the ill and not create its own batch of unintended consequences? (i.e. did “cash for clunkers” which stole money from my pocket to pay for my neighbor’s new car; forced car dealers to loan money to buyers interest free for who knows how long; destroyed many perfectly driveable cars thus cutting the supply of good used car for the poor, driving prices up; and cause who knows how much environmental harm by forcing the destruction of the perfectly good cars to benefit a limited number of industries really make any sense at all?

It is only when all four questions can be answered in the affirmative that a critical thinker would say “go for it.”

We need more critical thinkers.