Let Them Fail

I've been saying for a while that the $700 billion figure for the bailout is nothing more than a conservative stake in the ground and that through assumption of debt and acts other than the direct disbursement of cash, the federal government's gifts to the ultra-rich will extend into the trillions. Go read this article on Bloomberg.  Then, if you're still conscious, come back.

Seven and three-quarter trillion dollars is a sum so incomprehensively large that most Americans can't get their heads around it.  It's so huge as to be meaningless to most people you'd run into on the street.

The Bloomberg reporters try to put this into context, apparently because they seem to be one of the only ones who understand how important it is for people to grok exactly how much money this is.

The money that’s been pledged is equivalent to $24,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. It’s nine times what the U.S. has spent so far on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Congressional Budget Office figures. It could pay off more than half the country’s mortgages.

I dunno about you, but my household's share of that sum is $72,000.  The government wants to take $72,000 from my family and give it away to corporations.

For what?  We can't still be talking about bad mortgages and the securities tied to them.  Look at the last sentence of that quoted paragraph.  This money could pay off more than half the country's outstanding mortgages.  You could probably knock half off everybody's mortgage at this point and watch the capital that's freed up jump-start the economy.  (Of course, that's a ridiculous notion, but it goes to show that Congress would have us believe that this is a much bigger bogeyman.)

What we're seeing here is the flagrant looting of the U.S. Treasury.  If President-Elect Obama doesn't do something, our futures will be given away, consequence-free, to the ultra-rich.  Plain and simple.

What's the solution?  Stop throwing good money after bad and Let Them Fail.  Someone will buy up their assets and make them work more efficiently.  Citigroup isn't worthless.  Neither are the Big Three American auto manufacturers or the big financial institutions.  Someone will revalue those institutions, or pieces of them, and make them work.  But for that to happen, we have to remove the safety net and Let Them Fail.

Yes, it will suck.  Yes, we will all have to suffer.  It's better than the alternative, which is the notion that we move from a democratic system of government and a capitalistic economic system to a corporatist system, where the government is merely an instrument that allows large corporations and the ultra-rich to extort money from the people.

Under a system like that, large corporations and the executives that run them will play under a different set of rules.  They'll be able to run their companies as they see fit, with no consequence for failure.  You and I will make up for their inefficiencies as we're tasked with bailing them out when they fail and keeping them in a position of power - one where we don't really own our own property, since our property can be taken at will from us by corporations via the federal government.

Of course, it might not get that far.  Consider that, if the dollar is significantly devalued, those with large sums of money might be the only ones who can afford to maintain their lifestyle.  In short, it won't matter if you make $250,000 a year, the threshold at which President-Elect Obama believes you to be wealthy.  That $250,000 won't be able to pay for the lifestyle you're used to under today's expectations of the value of the dollar.  Only someone making over $1,000,000 a year will be able to afford that lifestyle.  Get it?  The ultra-rich are lengthening the yardstick.

Do something, President-Elect Obama, before there's no middle class left to defend.

Brand Loyalty

Someone isn't yet four months old, yet someone has a distinct preference for Apple products.

Hard to Get Excited

I've been less enthusiastic than some of my fellow Obama-ites.  Yes, we made history.  Yes, we made the right choice.  Yes, we'll eventually turn the country around.  Yes, it would have been a disaster if McCain had won.  I'm just finding it hard to be enthusiastic about the whole thing, and it's because I think the damage has already been done. I was very supportive of Senator Obama while he was running.  I gave money in small amounts - $25 here, $50 there.  I changed minds within my own circle of family and friends.  I didn't get to events, rallies or phone bank dial-fests, but I'll get to that in a minute.  I really wanted to get involved with this campaign and use the Internet as a focal point for activity.  Unfortunately, most of what I saw from Senator Obama, right up until the financial crisis really came to a head, was the use of e-mail as a fundraising mechanism.  It seemed like at every turn, Obama's people or the DCCC were asking for money, and I was left wondering what else I could do than plunk my credit card down.

Then the bailout came.  I was so frustrated that both McCain and Obama voted for the bailout that I stopped giving money to Senator Obama altogether.  I understand that it would have been a huge political challenge for Senator Obama to come out against the bailout, but anyone with any sense of intelligence could see that the bailout represented throwing good money after bad.  We should have let the free market decide.  Instead, firms that should have gone out of business will waste our money for a while before going out of business at some later date, or they'll hoard the money and continue to avoid loaning it out, or they'll use it to enrich their executives.

So I stopped giving money after the bailout vote.  That's when I started to see Senator Obama doing all sorts of really cool things to rally support using the Internet.  If I hadn't been so disgusted, I probably would have gone to one of the Obama parties in my neighborhood and dialed up likely voters in Pennsylvania.  I might have bought stickers and t-shirts.  I might have downloaded Obama's iPhone app and used it.  I was so disgusted, though, that I didn't.  It makes me feel crappy that I didn't participate like I wanted to, but I'd feel even crappier today if I had.

Obama was the right choice, but he's now going to spend much, if not all, of his first term dealing with the magnitude of the error he and his fellow senators and congressmen have made.  Key players in the financial industry looted the economy by telling all of us, essentially, that we needed to turn over a huge sum of money or the economy would collapse.  Despite many smart people saying that turning over $700 billion wouldn't do a damned thing, we did it anyway.  And it turned out pretty much the way we thought it would - the financial industry said "thanks" and continued screwing us.

So when we think about how Barack Obama was going to change the course of things and fund programs that made sense for our country, we wonder whether he'll be able to get things done.  $700 billion is a lot of money.  (And the impact is actually a lot greater.)  $700 billion is around $2,300 for every man, woman and child in America.  That much money simply vaporized - it was used to pay a ransom, essentially.

I've got three in my household.  If you average the $700 billion out over the U.S. population (yes, I know this isn't the right way to illustrate things, but I want people to understand the magnitude of what we're talking about here.) then the government gave $6,900 to corporations on behalf of my household.  In an instant.

My heating oil bills just doubled.  Even at the new, inflated rate, though, $6,900 heats my house for an entire year and gives me $1,500 left over.  $1,500 fills up my truck with gas for six months.

When I start thinking about things in these terms, it's hard to believe that we're going to be able to accomplish many of the goals Barack Obama wants to try to meet.  It's easy to keep chanting "Yes, we can!" but until I start seeing some concrete plans for getting us out of this mess, those are just empty words.

Sure, we might make some social progress, and I'm excited about that.  But when we talk about increasing the quality of life for the average American, and closing the gap between the haves and the have-nots (or, rather, the ultra-wealthy and everybody else), I remain skeptical.

I have nothing against being ultra-rich.  What I have a problem with is the ultra-rich staying ultra-rich by force rather than through playing by the rules.  When people who have money can put a gun to our heads and our government just gives them whatever they want, they haven't played by the rules.  They've stolen our well-being.  And shame on our government for letting it happen!

Until we all get smart and we learn to see these things coming, we're not going to be able to keep these schemes from unfolding and continuing to rob our society of what it needs to grow closer to being a true meritocracy.  And when people feel like there's nothing they can do to keep the ultra-rich from plundering our society - watch out.

Ad Networks are Everything

One drawback to writing an online marketing column is the off-topic pitches.  Maybe I should send some of these "square peg in a round hole" specialists to people who really know PR, like Peter Shankman or Mark Naples.  I'm guessing that they're both overwhelmed, though. Especially lately, I've been writing columns that look into the future and postulate that if we had X technology, digital could get a larger share of marketing budgets.  X could be planning tools like automated repositories of actual buy data to more robust preditive reach/frequency applications to apps that would automatically query the marketplace for inventory avails.  X could be measurement technologies that give marketers a gauge on sales lift resulting from digital marketing programs.  X could be things that streamline the RFP/Evaluation/Plan Development process.

In all cases, I get follow-up e-mails from all sorts of people pitching technology.  They go something like this:

Mr. Hespos - Thank you for this column.  My client has something that we think will address the need for new planning tools you talked about.  I'd like to arrange a meeting between you and [client] CEO George Q. Schmendrickson as soon as your schedule will allow.

Great, I think to myself.  Someone already has something similar to what I think the industry needs in order to keep chugging forward with respectable growth.  There are so many tech vendors in this space that it would be very easy to miss it if someone had already addressed a market need I identified.  It happens quite frequently.

So I take the call.  Or the WebEx.  Or whatever it is.  And when we get to the Big Reveal, it turns out that the amazing technology that will revolutionize digital marketing is...

An Ad Network.

I'm totally fed up with this.  And I'm not sure how, precisely, it happens.  Maybe the PR person is so desperate to get their client in front of industry journalists that they'll say anything to make it happen.  Or maybe they're so clueless about what their clients do that they simply delude themselves into thinking that their client has the solution to every digital marketing problem.  (Hey, Naples and Shankman - Get over here and tell me why the f--k this happens in comments.  I really need to know.)

Regardless of WHY it happens, it's a real waste of effort.  And I'm starting to come to the conclusion that the only way digital marketing column writers are going to be able to avoid this is to start calling out these jokers.  Publicly.  And embarrassingly.

What PR schmuck still believes that after a decade and a half, no one has yet had the idea to cut a deal with an ad server, call up a bunch of sites and start selling ads on them?  Do they think that someone can be in the digital marketing space for more than five minutes and not know what an ad network is?

The disconnects are embarrasing as hell.  I've had conversations that go like this:

"So, CEO of 600PornSitesonPHPAds.com...  Your corporate communications guy told me this call was necessary because you claim to have a predictive Reach/Frequency tool that's more accurate than comScore's.  Is that even remotely true?"

"No, but we do have 600 brand-safe environments in 23 content channels that would be suitable for your clients' advertising."

"Thank you.  DIAF."

I'm getting so sick of this.  I'm thinking that from now on, the approach will be:

1. Immediately hang up
2. Ask my editors to build out a blog where all of the digital writers can publish the names of these companies
3. Profit

Yeah, so that's my rant.  Considering how many times Shankman has said "Keep pitches on topic" in HARO, you'd think that people would be getting the picture.  I guess not.