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Several years ago, there was this woman who personally told me their family’s struggle to get back their entire fortune which was taken over by a bank thru some insidious practices. They went to court and to the media to fight their battle. She said they are winning but they still have a long way to go.
We all know now how the big international banks practically cheated us of our money by creating all those complex financial instruments that eventually brought down the world economy. Thankfully, that has already gotten everyone’s attention and hopefully, one of these days, something good would come off it. I mean, the authorities are already on to it, right? Right?
Anyway, if those things that they did in Wall Street, and wherever else they cook up schemes like that, are kinda impersonal I am not too sure that they are not doing it on the more personal level.
Last week, I went to a bank where I was maintaining a savings account deposit and asked them to convert the equivalent of U.S. $1,000.00 from that account and wire the amount to a clearing house in the U.S. for further credit to my account in a U.S. online brokerage house.
My local bank did as instructed. It converted the money according to the prevailing exchange rate at that moment and charged me their fees accordingly. The wire was sent and a few hours later it was credited to my U.S. broker account.
It was a fast and painless transaction. For a while, I thought about how wonderful it was to do business with a bank – until I saw the figure credited to my broker account. It was U.S. $15.00 less! My $1000 became $985.00 after it passed thru the wires!
Immediately I contacted my bank and inquired what happened. They promised to look into it and said they will get back to me. They did, with the assurance that US$1,000.00 was wired to my online broker.
I sent an email to my online broker in the U.S. asking if there were fees that they are charging their clients that they somehow failed to mention in their communications with me. I told them the amount of money I sent them and the amount that reflected in my account with them.
Very courteously, somebody from the U.S. online stock broker’s office assured me that there were no hidden fees that I had to pay and that they don’t charge acceptance fee on wired funds. They further said that they don’t use intermediary banks which normally charge fees.
That was great! I have two very efficient organizations handling my very small amount of money. One of them sent the exact amount I specified in my instructions. The other faithfully recorded the amount they received thru the wires.
Except, somehow, during the process, a portion of my money disappeared!
I know, it’s just U.S. $15.00 but…?
To the real techy guys, the idea of setting up a WiFi internet router is like breathing. You know, an effortless function that requires nothing, or it could be just like walking (without thinking where to go) just putting one foot after the other.
Unfortunately, the same is not true with ordinary guys. To many, the internet is still a mystery. The concept of millions of inter-connected computers all over the world, sharing information, has just not yet really sank into their heads. It took quite a while to sink in mine.
Oh, of course, they are already using computers for research but only pretty much like the way they are using hard bound encyclopedias. They know the information is there, but that’s just about it.
It is just like the way many computer and internet users… are only users. They have no idea how those things ever get to work, but they are working. So, you don’t expect them to figure out what goes wrong with a computer or the internet when something goes wrong. And neither should you expect them to install such complex sounding mechanisms as internet routers!
I was one such guy. No, not really. I had a bit of an idea how the internet works (an idea about a trillionth size of a flea). At least, that idea enabled me to think that the internet is composed of those millions and millions of computers connected to each other with mountains of endless jumbled analog and fiber optic lines.
Uh…don’t ask me how they got connected please!
Well, I managed to get my computer connected to a printer a while back and made it work, but I haven’t tried connecting two computers with a wire yet, much more make them talk to each other. Sure, there’s internet in the office. But we have technicians as well. And, somehow, they manage to make things work there like magic – and without using wands too!
Unfortunately, I live more than a hundred kilometers away from the office. It’s a subdivision in a foot of a mountain where landline based telephones and cable television had not yet reached. A service provider has just recently activated a Wimax in the area. I don’t know how he got there, but one day a sales rep of the service provider manifested in front of my door and sold me a subscription.
He was soon followed by Warlocks who climbed to the roof of my house attached something and activated my internet subscription. They rather vehemently refused to install a WiFi router in the house since they said I’m only good for one internet connection. Meaning, my internet activities should be confined in a room where they dangled the internet wire. They made sure it works and then they left. No further discussions.
But I am using a laptop and I like moving around the house, so I went looking for a wireless router hoping the store where I’ll buy it will have its own technician to set it up in my house. I found a router, the store has a technician but his butt is glued to his seat. He doesn’t go anywhere setting up routers.
I was only told after they have taken my payment and closed the cash register!
Aghast, I asked the store clerk how in the world am I going to use the router?
Blank stares confronted me, from everyone in the store. Everyone! Then everyone smiled, including the clerk who asked: “sir, since you said you are going to use the internet yourself, I believe you can read?” When I answered on the affirmative, he turned the box of the router around and while pointing at it said “Please, just follow the instructions.”
I was unconvinced. I suspected I was being taken for a ride. There were only about five steps to take (including: 1.Opening the box, 2. Attaching the unit to a power supply) if I follow the instructions. It was too simple, it can’t be right! There was not even a word there on how to switch on the unit! Ha!!
But then, I had no choice. I went home with the unit. As it turned out step one of the instructions (opening the box) was the hardest part. I had to attach some wires, but somehow, I didn't find them as hard to do as opening the box.
I followed everything to the letter and it worked! Did you hear that? I was able to set up a wireless internet router, and it worked! I didn't even have to switch the thing on since there is no switch.
You just put them together accordingly, plug it (it switches on by itself) and you are ready to go!
What is the moral of this story?
Some of those techy stuffs are only complicated because that’s how we think they are. What I have just accomplished was just pretty simple. The instructions were pretty simple too. I just followed them.
Blank cartridges. Pic source: Wikipedia
It’s still the holidays right? But a market newbie like me who is still in the process of building his finances has to keep on his toes, continue to learn the ropes of investing and try to make as few mistakes as his investing fund can afford. And if we are talking about my own fund, there’re really very few mistakes that we can afford to make.
So, I read and read and read and read and… this came to mind: Is there such a thing as blank money?
Well, there’s this famous investor Mohamed El-Erian, chief executive of giant bond manager Pimco, interviewed by AP, who likened the recent stocks gains to a “sugar high” that he said is “unsustainable.” Read the story here Really Long Link
He is like many others who are saying that investors cannot expect a “V” shape economic recovery this time. They are saying that the fuel that runs the world economy so far are bail out and stimulus funds.
Now I’m out of my depths here, but somehow I do recall that economists have said time and again (not exactly the way I am saying it now) that money pumped into an economy tend to create more money that further fuels the economy.
I was probably reading it all wrong, but if the experts are saying that we are in for more hardships because the money that circulates in the system are pure bail out and stimulus funds that will soon have a waning effect on the world economy, does that mean that there is a different kind of money? Something that is sterile? Not fertile?
I need a little help here because I kinda believe that there is only one kind of money and it is the kind that multiplies, grows and create jobs when used properly.
The problem is, the more comments I read about the pump priming, bail-out and stimulus funds, the more I get the impression that there will really be a lot of hardships ahead which to my newbie eyes translates to: “more companies will go bankrupt, get out of the equities market, quick!”
Scary stuff!
Except, I’m a bit of the stubborn kind. I tend to cling to the idea that somehow, all those money that were dumped by the world governments to the world economy will find a way to breed, reproduce and inspire fertile minds to formulate ideas that could spawn productive endeavors that will eventually create jobs or maybe, just maybe, bring back some of the lost ones.
Sure, that could take a while… but there must be a reason why some of those who received bail-out funds are now raring to pay them back. I’m quite certain they are not returning that money because they suddenly found no use for it.
But I have an open mind. I’m probably too far off the mark here…
Will somebody please convince me to totally get out of the market because there’s no money to be made there, no matter how careful I become - even if I am willing to wait a while – because all that money that they are throwing into the economy are all blanks!
Well, you know me. I am not the kind of guy who would encourage people to buy anything beyond their means and start another worldwide economic collapse.
Oh, okay, we are just talking about a High Definition video camcorder
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If you think it is crazy to rush to a place where there is an erupting volcano - at a time when government officials are evacuating the residents from that place - I’ll agree with you.
That was what I thought when, as a young boy, we couldn’t get a ride in a bus that goes to our town because every single seat has been taken by people who would like to go to Legaspi – to watch Mayon Volcano erupt
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Please don’t get confused by the title. This story is targeted to a portion of the Five (5) Million Filipino OFWs who just might wander to Orble pages, those who may still be searching their souls on who to vote for in the 2010 Presidential elections.
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If you know anything about the country I am in, you’ll probably know that Christmas is feted the longest in the Philippines. There was a time when Christmas Carols and Christmas lights, lanterns and everything that reminds you of the Yuletide season become visible here at the onset of the “ber” months.
You know, the months that end in “ber” September, October, etc
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Bring additional sheet of paper please! Well, not yet. Inventors of a “paper battery” believe however that in a not so distant future, the world might see battery power reside on papers.
Commercially, that is
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Hmmmm… now, I am beginning to wonder if that’s the reason why people here keep saying we have the wrong president – no matter who becomes president.
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Maybe inefficiency started it all. You know, like you have this mobile phone company which only has a good signal in this neck of the woods and another provider that monopolizes the signal in an area the size of a pea where you happen to be and the only choice you have, since you are going to be there for quite a while, is either stay incommunicado or subscribe to the company that can give you a line to the outside world.
Anyway, the way people communicate these days? That would be like giving you no choice at all
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