The “Big Three” have laid out their needs and have declared that if they don’t get any financial help soon, they may just be closing shop. Is the U.S. government listening? Unless they have earplugs on, the closure of the big three: General Motors, Ford and Chevrolet, could be the worst economic development the U.S. has ever faced and from all indications, they would do well to heed their call.
The Detroit automakers on Tuesday urged Congress to authorize $34 billion in loans and credit lines, far more than the $25 billion they failed to secure in November when lawmakers demanded the companies offer plans showing they could be made “viable.”
The development came on the same day that GM, Chrysler and Ford Motor Co posted a drop in combined U.S. sales of nearly 40 percent for November and warned that the world’s largest vehicle market showed signs of tumbling further in 2009.
The government has been put in a fix following the worst economic crisis ever to hit the country since decades ago. The pressure is mounting and though some sources say that help is on the way, hopefully it will not be too late to bail out the big three from impending closure or worst, bankruptcy.
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[tags]detroit_automakers, impending_closure, ford_motor, economic_crisis, financial_help, general_motors, economic_development, chrysler, chevrolet, bankruptcy, ford, congress, loans[/tags]
The financial crisis we are experiencing today is something I liken to biological warfare. For the record, biological warfare is defined as:
A BW weapon may be intended to kill, incapacitate or seriously impede on an individual as well as entire cities or places. It may also be defined as the material or defense against such employment. BW is a military technique that can be used by nation-states or non-national group. In the latter case, or if a nation-state uses it clandestinely, it may also be considered bioterrorism.
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Does it make sense? We are all tied up trying to build business but in the process, we were much too inclined with profit, trying to overwhelm our competitors until they close shop. Through the process, some have succeeded and has brought the world alongside with it.
So is the financial and economic crisis today a form of biological warfare or bioterrorism? It certainly looks close to it. Nations are falling and businesses faltering. What is the main ingredient in it all? Interest and receivables.
Lastly, has anyone wondered what happened to terror reigns? Is this not the great time to strike? Thank God they have not thought of it. Pair it with the crisis we have today and only God knows what man will do!
[tags]biological_warfare, main_ingredient, economic_crisis, nation_states, bioterrorism, nation_state, latter_case, receivables, financial_crisis, great_time, terror, god[/tags]
In an earlier post on this blog we discussed different strategies for making your business energy efficient as a way of cutting down on costs and in doing so helping your company stay afloat during the economic crisis that is currently unfolding. However, just as energy can be wasted, so too can technological infrastructure.
Most of the technicians that you meet will purposely build redundancies into key parts of a network in order to ensure that a failure at one key point within a network will not affect the whole network in a way that can not be reversed. However, technicians by their very nature are trained to be on the safe side when they are setting up these networks because being on the safe side means a higher customer satisfaction level at the end of the day.
If you hire a technician to reduce redundancy within your network infrastructure however, they will most certainly do it. This is not recommended for most companies and especially not for companies that rely heavily on electronic data, but it is something to consider if you are desperate. Desperate times call for desperate measures, but these measures only become desperate if you actually experience a technological failure of some kind. It is a real life example of the ends justifying the means.
[tags]customer_satisfaction_level, desperate_times_call_for_desperate_measures, technological_infrastructure, desperate_measures, network_infrastructure, safe_side, key_point, economic_crisis, business_energy, redundancy, electronic_data, failure, blog[/tags]
One of the only industries that have been doing well with the current economic crisis is the electronics industry. They have slashed prices to many of their products and are still getting orders pouring in everyday from companies that are interested in abandoning a lot of their physical infrastructure and making the move to virtual real estate in the form of websites and servers.
This is a good idea and one that you might consider for your own business to help get through the current economic rough patch. If you have physical buildings under your control, not only do you have to pay for the maintenance of that property, but you also have to pay for the amenities inside it as well as the taxes on the property that you own. Switching to electronic holdings reduces the maintenance costs and virtually eliminates everything else, allowing you to really save some money when all is said and done.
Switching to electronic infrastructures over physical ones in areas like retail and management might seem like a less than ideal situation and with the majority of the world still based on last generation’s technology it probably is less than ideal. However, in times of economic crisis nobody can afford to pass up on money-saving ideas, especially if those ideas will allow you for the most part to maintain your business as it currently is, just in a different form.
[tags]amenities, economic_crisis, electronics_industry, electronic_holdings, electronic_infrastructures, maintenance_costs, money_saving_ideas, physical_buildings, physical_infrastructure, rough_patch, servers, virtual_real_estate[/tags]
If you are looking for ways to survive as a business during recessionary times, you can either do it by increasing inflows or decreasing the amount of money that you spend. Since no business really expects increased inflows during times of economic crisis, the natural way for you to try and survive is to decrease the amount of money that you spend.
After salaries, the next largest single cost for most businesses tends to be energy. Well, the interesting thing about energy costs is that most of them are unnecessary. If you take a close look at the way your business expends energy, it might be possible to save hundreds of dollars a month in energy costs without actually changing anything about your business. You can do this by making sure everything is off when you leave for the day and also only turning things on when you actually need to use them.
Things like lights, energy intensive appliances and computers tend to run around the clock at most businesses even though they are only actually used for a few hours each day. A little intelligent use of energy will allow you to save a lot of money each month on your energy costs and you won’t even really have to change the way you do business in order to realize those gains.
[tags]amount_of_money, appliances, clock, economic_crisis, energy_costs, recessionary_times, salaries[/tags]
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