lucasviewstranslucent10

Work Outside Your Home!

darvas — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 16:39:57 +0000

Why the big push to “work from home”? I’ve seen so many advertisements for opportunities to work from the comfort of your own home. Many of them resemble the get rich quick scheme and others follow the same strain but obscure themselves under the guise of producing a secondary income with statements like, “You won’t get rich but…” and then they hit you with stories of people making $5K or more a month and quiting their jobs.

I think America is want of ambition. What is wrong with getting up and going to work. Granted, a day would be much better spent if it were a job you loved but what’s wrong with a job that’s not so bad? After all, we are no longer required to wake up at the break of down to tend cattle, to sow and reap the fields as our forefather’s did. The back breaking labors of a free holder’s farm are no longer required of us. Have we come so far from the puritanical work ethic that any exertion should invoke waves of self-pitty and sorrow. It would appear that the clamor of grievances, lamentations and protests of the contemporary populous, so dissatisfied with their lot, would surpass that of a southern slave in the eighteenth century. There are no whips cracking, no lives being sold and bought at auction, nor any other grievous and contemptous acts with which we must contend in the modern world. Yet we are dissatisfied.

The allure of riches has so tempted us with the mirage of ease, tranquility and joy that we have undermined or even forgotten the felicity of a mean but honest life, the peace of prudence and forethought, and the gratifying contentment that follows hard labor and time well spent.

What would become of us if all could stay indoors and get rich with little effort? We would bemoan our woeful boredom and lament over the cruel whip and contemptuous fetters of the brutal task masters ease and tranquility.

Legal Language Is Not Magic

darvas — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 21:56:00 +0000

There seems to be an unhealthy fear of contracts or legal language. I am a Contract Manager for a multi-national engineering company and people come to me all the time, asking me to unravel or interpret a sentence or paragraph that is written in plain English.

There is no magic in the words. It is all in plain English, you just need to take the time to read through the words and make sure that they are accurately depicting what you want them to.

Below is a typical contractual indemnity clause:

The Vendor shall indemnify, defend and hold harmless the Company from and against any and all Claims that the Company suffers or incurs, directly or indirectly, which are attributable to the Work.

What is this really saying?

Well what does the word indemnify mean?

Indemnify – To guard or secure against anticipated loss.

So the Vendor is supposed to guard, secure against loss and hold harmless the Company, but from what?

From all Claims

What is a claim?

Claim – a demand for something as due; an assertion of a right or an alleged right.

For example, if you owe me money and you have not paid, I can make a claim (or a demand that the money is due).

Now we have to ask ourselves what the next part is saying. And this is the part that requires some review.

The rest of the sentence reads “…all Claims that the Company suffers or incurs, directly or indirectly, which are attributable to the Work”.

If we are the Vendor we should be asking ourselves what this means.

If we were conversing with the Company we might ask the following question:

So you’re saying that I am going to indemnify and hold you harmless for any claim that arises out of what I’m doing, whether it is a direct claim or an indirect claim?

Then the Vendor should then ask how much control he has over what he is doing.

If I am a copy machine repair man and I am entering the premises of the Company to work on a machine, it means that I and my company will be responsible for any claim related to me fixing the machine.

So if I have the machine open, with electrical parts exposed, and while I’m in the bathroom, an employee of the company, who thinks he knows about copy machines, starts playing around, electrocutes himself and dies. I am responsible.

Why?

Because I said that I would indemnify and hold the company harmless.

The most important thing about reviewing any indemnity clause is to have a very good idea of what work is actually being performed under the contract, how much control you have over the work (or any possible hazards that might result from it) and how much control the other party to the contract has over the work or the environment under which the work will be performed.

Once you have a good idea, you can begin to change the language of the contract to fit the particular job that you are doing.

Stock Market - Stock Money Market - What’s the Diff

darvas — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 16:29:16 +0000

I always thought that the Stock Market and the Money Market were the same thing. After all, in the Stock Market shares are bought with money, right? So you can talk about the Stock Market, the Money Market, or the hybrid Stock/Money Market or, taking away the slash, the Stock Money Market. Money is traded back and forth in the market so it is also a Stock Money Market, right? Wrong! I’ve discovered that in the financial industry you have to be careful with your assumptions.

So what is the Stock Market, well it is the market where stocks are traded. Stocks are typically a longer term investment. You buy stock and you wait around and watch the stock market until the price goes up (hopefully). Some stocks may offer dividends but the “buy and wait around” idea still holds.

The money market on the other hand consists of instruments that have high liquidity and short duration. Let me explain. High liquidity just means that they can be turned into cash very quickly. Short duration - well that should be a no brainer - but for those of us who invariably get confused when it comes to the Stock Money Market - it just means that the instrument doesn’t last very long.

What do I mean by instrument? Well, I mean the actual thing that you are using to make or borrow money. In the case of the Money Market the types of instruments that are used are CD’s (you’ve heard of those), bankers acceptances (whatever that means), treasury bills (common! you know this one!), etc. These are all easily turned into cash. You would issue one of these if you’re trying to get money fast. You would buy one of these if you were looking for a quick and safe place to park your money (safe meaning that you will not be at the whims of the fluctuating stock market but you certainly won’t get rich).

So if you have money and you want to do something with it you can go to the Stock Money Market. There you have your choice of high risk, high return or low risk, low return. In the Stock Money Market, you can either study out the varied companies and/or instruments and invest wisely, or you can watch the news and reports and make irrational decisions based on a very short term focus. This is called being a day trader. The Stock Money Market is there for you, all you need to do is dive in but proceed with caution.

Confused About Stock Market - Case In Point

darvas — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 15:36:45 +0000

For those of you that read my blog “Is Anyone Else Confused About the Stock Market”, I found an example of the point that I was attempting to make in my entry. If you recall I stated, “So, in spite of how much your company has grown or how well your company is managed, the fact that you didn’t meet some analyst’s expectations for the quarter has led people to think that your company is somehow faltering and worth less”. The corollary, as I stated in the article, was that your company could be in complete shambles but as long as it meets the expectation of analysts, it is considered healthy and strong.

In today’s headlines was the statement, “The Dow Jones gained about 50 points at mid-morning. Banks got a boost after analyst Meredith Whitney said on CNBC that she was upgrading her view on Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which has long been considered the strongest bank amid the economic downturn.” Who is this Meredith Whitney and what information is she using to upgrade her view that Goldman Sachs Group Inc is better off today than a few days ago? After all, there was no massive downgrade of the Wall Street financial market stocks before it went belly-up a few months ago.

I understand that there are very sophisticated methods of analyzing a company but there is only so much information you can get from a bunch of numbers and assumptions.

Hot Business Market Scam Removed - But All Not Safe

darvas — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:27:59 +0000

They’v changed the look of their advertisement and they’ve gotten rid of the Hot Business Market link. They must have finally realized that they were partnering with a scam. Take a look at the link below to see the new page.

http://www.theresaboyd.com/?t202id=93216&t202kw=earn%20money&gclid=CKO6vZzztJsCFRFWagodXEG9Pg

However, this site is still dangerous. What they don’t tell you is that, once you pay the $1.95 for Google , you are automatically signed up with a host of Internet marketing companies that, if not cancelled, could cost you well over $80.00 a month. Someone is going to call you from some marketing company and ask you to invest between $5,000 and $10,000 in starting your own business Online. It isn’t as easy and immediate as this advertisement lets on.

If you choose to cancel before you are charged, you’ll have to make sure you get each one and cancel within the trial period.

Is Anyone Else Confused About the Stock Market?

darvas — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 22:54:02 +0000

Let’s say that you own a company and let’s say that you make and sell refrigerators. At first your product line is pretty standard. Sales are decent but there is still room for improvement. You start changing your design and sales start improving. With the improved sales you have a little extra money, so you hire an engineer to improve your product. After a few weeks this genius engineer invents something that revolutionizes refrigerators and sales begin to take off and you barely have the capacity to meet orders.

At this point, in my view, you have four choices. You can make your customers wait and continue at your current capacity (not a wise decision), you can go to a bank and ask for a loan to invest in increasing your capacity to meet demand subjecting yourself to debt and interest payments, you can go to a venture capitalist, ask for money and loose a measure of ownership in your company, or you can completely loose ownership in your company and go public by offering stocks.

Let’s say you go public. With the extra money you gained from the IPO you hire a dozen more genius engineers and they continually work on improving your product. Sales continue to increase and all looks well.

All of a sudden these people called analysts start looking at your company and they start deciding how much it is worth, how much it should grow and how much it should sell.

Now let’s say that the engineers have made all of the improvements they could make to your refrigerators and sales stabilize. You’re still selling a lot of refrigerators but some analyst decides that you should have sold more than you did and the price that your stock is trading for in the market goes down.

So, in spite of how much your company has grown or how well your company is managed, the fact that you didn’t meet some analyst’s expectations for the quarter has led people to think that your company is somehow faltering and worth less.

Now let’s assume you have a competitor who has followed the same path, except instead of hiring genius engineers, he is somehow steeling your IP and coming up with comparable products. The managers are avaricious, acquisitive and all they want is to improve their bottom line at all costs. Turn over is high at the company due to terrible management and it is tottering on ruin.

However, as a result of some one-off, crooked deal that will never occur again this company sells more refrigerators and meets the analyst’s expectations. The price of the stocks goes up.

Now multiply this by thousands of companies in hundreds of different industries.

What exactly is the stock market telling us and why has it become so important that it is watched by everyone in the world?

Who is making the stock market rise and fall? Is it the businesses themselves, the market environment, the analysts or the day trader trying to get rich quick?

I like the old days when a company that was well managed, was well esteemed.

A Beseiged Musician

darvas — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 20:27:31 +0000

I guess the time tested truth that the abnegation of the virtues that grant success inevitably leads to the demise of the successful has once again reared its cheerless head in the benighted story of our beloved pop star Michael Jackson.I am neither judge nor jury and I won’t pretend to know enough about the details of Michael’s alleged illicit activities to pass sentence. The virtues of which I speak are those of common sense, hard work, financial and business acumen, prudence and forethought. All of which seem to have given way to acquisitiveness and avarice.

If we look at Michael Jackson as an empire, we can compare his fate to that of ancient Greece or Rome or any other great nation that sprouted from humble origins, fought its way out of obscurity and mediocrity, soared to the heights of success and power, and ultimately became infected by some unknown contagion that caused it to falter and blunder into ruin.

To spend between $30 and $40 million dollars above what you’re bringing in each year shows a lack of wisdom that would amaze and befuddle any of us, especially those greedy Wall Street types that have “Madoff” with money of equal amounts and much, much more. Though his creditors may not share the sentiment, I don’t believe his lavish spending to be equivalent in malevolence to a deliberate ponzy scheme. He was merely guilty of spending beyond his means which ought not to be a foreign concept to the highly indebted American. However, I do admit that the mere sums in question here make it appear more criminal. My question is who are these people who lent him all that money?

In the end, I would like to remember this talented, ground-breaking, beloved and ever eccentric musician as the man behind the music that made me dance and sing. Whatever his life was or wasn’t, I’m grateful for the music and videos and the afterglow they always invoke.

Hot Business Market Scam - More Information

darvas — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 22:13:25 +0000

I finally found the advertisement that induced me into the scam. The following is a link to an article that claims to come from the Atlanta Tribune.

http://atlanta-tribune-news.com/?t202id=82875&t202kw=making%20money%20on%20the%20internet&gclid=CJvO2oSloZsCFQ6jagode0AHCA

The link to Hot Business Market is titled Internet profit generator. If you click on the link it brings you to a web-page that asks for your name, number, address, etc; to see if you’ll “qualify” for the program (link http://rs925.cashsecretclub.com/?subid=260069261&pubid=445982 , I put in all bogus info and still qualified).

It then brings you to another page that asks for your credit card information (here is the link to that page https://ssl.encryptedprocessing.com/~stores/store/secure/189/ ).

On this page there is a link to the Terms and Conditions. Buried in these terms is the charge for $81.32.

Take a good look at these pages and avoid them at all costs.

Retaliation Hot Business Market Scam

darvas — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 14:08:32 +0000

If you’ve been duped by Hot Business Market, here’s some information we were able to uncover:

Hot Business Market is based in Las Vegas, Nevada. One of the people that were suckered into the scam contacted the the fraud department of the Las Vegas Police Department and was informed that she should contact the Federal Trade Commission and notify them of the fraud.

However, we will need individuals to point out that there was no indication of any charge other than the $1.97 because when I called my bank to refute the charge, they sent me to the fraud department. The lady I spoke with informed me that the bank had a few complaints about this company and that they would work with me on getting it resolved. While on the phone with me, she went to a website that she claimed was the Hot Business Market sign-up page and she told me that when she clicked in the credit card field, a window popped up that stated that entering the credit card information authorizes the company to charge the $81.32 if the trial is not cancelled within 7 days. I don’t remember seeing any window when I entered my information.

It appears as though Hot Business Market has modified their website to include this feature as a protection against fraud charges.

The problem is, how do we prove that the warning was not their when we signed up?

More Fooled by Hot Business Market

darvas — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 15:37:28 +0000

I just had two more people comment to my Wordpress blog complaining about Hot Business Market. Here are their stories:

Wish I had read your comment before I got hooked up with them. When I called to complain about the 81.32 charge they got very tacky they are supposed to refund half of it but when I told them I was going to report them to the BBB her comment was “screw you”. Is there any way we can get them shut down?

foxylittlered@aol.com

Glenda

This is truly a “SCAM”….there is no disclosure about another charge of $81.32 after the $1.97. I can’t believe that Google & Ebay allows this to carry their name or maybe they are in partnership! Who knows???

LET ME SAY: DO NOT US “HOT BUSINESS MARKET; to do anything; it is
all a real SCAM!!!

mrb60@bellsouth.net

Bea

http://hotbusinessmarket.com