everyday

With all recent news regarding the impending mortgage crisis, especially the FDIC takeover of IndyMac Banc Corp., I think it is time to stop bailing out large corporations and simply let them fail.

If “we the people” keep bailing out these large corporations, then the large corporations will never need to exercise restraint. They will be able to make enormous profits off of us by making foolhardy business decisions knowing full well that should things turn out badly, the people that they just raped will offer up their hard earned tax dollars to shore up the corporation so they can do it all over again. We need to end this vicious cycle now.

If we bail out anyone, it should be ourselves. I say, take whatever money we are planning on using to bail out the large mortgage lenders and secure the sale of the their loans to more solvent banks. I don’t think we should be helping out the banks, we should be helping the people. We should restructure and underwrite the loans that are failing and offer them up for sale to banks that aren’t failing. This way, we avoid the looming crises and people don’t lose their homes.

Of course, this will only be a temporary solution. A more permanent solution is to regulate the mortgage market so that sub-prime loans can not happen.

The New York Times is reporting that Toyota is planning to stop production of it’s Tundra truck and Sequoia SUV for three months this year to adjust for decreasing demand (Toyota Scales Back Production of Big Vehicles). They have also decided to re-purpose a new plant in Mississippi to manufacture their hybrid Prius instead of trucks.

I think this is a fantastic move for Toyota who, in my opinion, misjudged the market when the revised their truck lineup to make the Tundra and Tacoma trucks larger. This is especially true of the Tacoma, I owned a 2004 Toyota Tacoma and absolutely loved that truck. I thought it was sized perfectly. The new Tacoma is larger, but doesn’t really add any more utility. It seems as though Toyota made the truck larger for the sake of making it larger. I would have preferred that they focused on making the existing truck better, not just bigger.

Via: BBC News

Oil trades at $100 per barrel. I guess the good news is that our current administration fought against an increase to the CAFE standards, so at least we know they are working hard to help out.

Well, nothing like being a month late. While I was extremely disappointed with Flickr’s prescribed response time, the problem did sort itself out the next day. I was finally able to log in to Flickr about one hour before I was contacted by their technical support. So, poor support, but the problem fixed itself. Hopefully I will not need to contact Flickr’s technical support any more in the future.

I have used Flickr for years now. While I have been generally pleased with their service, pleased enough to upgrade to their “Pro” service, I have recently ran into a problem with their support (or lack thereof) that I find wholly unacceptable. I was in the process of migrating my Flickr account to a new Yahoo! ID when my Flickr account became inaccessible. When I attempt to login to my Flickr account using my Yahoo! ID, I receive the following error:

Your registration was successful.

However, we couldn’t log you in automatically because it looks like you don’t have cookies enabled.

There are a few options:

• Clear your existing Flickr cookies
• Check that your cookies are actually enabled (Click here for instructions on how to enable your cookies.)
• If you’ve done both of these things, and restarted your browser, and tried to log in and it’s still not working, please contact us.

Here’s a link to the login page.

Alright, some funky error is happening. No big deal, sometimes this stuff happens and I am willing to allow them to correct the problem. I set out to contact Flickr according to their directions. The form was simple and I had it filled out in just a few moments. After clicking on “Submit”, I received the following email:

Just a quick email from Team Flickr to let you know that we’ve successfully received your recent Help by Email query and we hope to respond within 3 days.

We’d also like to take an opportunity to remind you that one query is sufficient and multiple queries regarding the same issue make the Magic Donkey cry.

Lastly, you may not be aware that our FAQs and forums are full of help goodness:

http://www.flickr.com/help/faq/
http://www.flickr.com/help/forum/

The Flickreenos

Some of you may have missed the infuriating part… 3 days!!! Are they kidding? I pay good money for this service and their goal for simply responding to my support inquiry is 3 days! WTF? This is simply unacceptable, and I am looking into alternatives to Flickr as soon as I finish this post. With my annual membership as a Flickr Pro user I expect “Pro” support, not to have to wait 3 days for a response to my inquiry. Note that they have not said that the problem will be fixed within 3 days (which would also be unacceptable), they will only be responding to my inquiry within 3 days.

I was a little apprehensive when it was announced that Yahoo! would be acquiring Flickr. Up until today, when I required support, I have had no problems. After perusing the user forums I have found that there are many unhappy users that have received poor support from Flickr, post Yahoo!.

I will post Flickr’s actual response time and what the resolution of the problem when that eventually happens.

[UPDATE] I did receive a response from Flickr, within their specified time, but the the problem had already magically fixed itself. I still thinks that 3 days is way too long to expect a support response from a service that I am paying for!

via: Wired

Autopia (a blog from within Wired) has an article talking on the economic downward spiral that the big three (Ford, GM and Chrysler) are facing. The article doesn’t say much as to the reason these three, former megalithic, companies are failing. It points to production cycles as a reason, saying that they are a few years behind their Japanses counterparts in terms of styling and fuel economy. I would argue that their problems are endemic to their corporate culture.

The first problem for the Big Three is that they are saddled with enormous liabilities caused by an overly greedy union, the United Auto Workers. The Big Three have agreed to numerous union demands instead of really fixing any of their employment problems. They have given away ridiculous retirement packages in leiu of wage raises. This was fine in the 60’s and 70′ s when their profits were sky-high, but as the rest of the world ate away at the Big Three’s market share, they failed to see the writing on the wall. As a result of this, just as the pension liabilities were coming due, profits were dwindling. Had they seen the writing on the wall, they would have been capable of making changes to ensure that they could remain competitive, not that they would have, but they could have.

The next major problem is more of a problem with the culture of the American auto manufacturers. These companies, for a long time, had a virtual monopoly on the market. They were able to extract enormous profits from absolute crap, the “crap” being the cars they built. They were able to make piles of cash without innovating or doing any research. Take the new Ford Mustang for instance, this is the first time in this car’s storied history that it has ever sat on a entirely new chassis. This means that all previous Mustangs were, to some extent, still rolling around on a chassis that was engineered and developed in the late 50’s. That is simply ridiculous!

The only way these companies can turn themselves around is to work as hard as possible at emulating Toyota and Honda. They need to focus on crafting quality, innovative automobiles that people will actually want to purchase. Then they can leverage their brand name recognition and the loyalty that many people (for reasons unbeknownst to me) still have for them.