Tag: economics

Ayoù sont les téléphones?

Bec Doux et Ses Amis, from Cajun Héritage

It appears that a Paris-based outsourcing company will be creating some jobs in Shreveport, Louisiana:

French outsourcing giant Teleperformance has announced that it will create 740 jobs in Shreveport, Louisiana, in addition to its 1,260 existing employees there.

I found this story through NOLA Française and, when I read it, I immediately thought of a French-language call center, but I imagine a call center, particularly one that would be hiring Louisiana French speakers, is not all that likely. Just because the company is French doesn’t mean they need Francophone employees.

But it got me thinking, “Why not?” Part of what holds a language back can certainly be chalked up to a lack of meaningful uses and that would include not needing it to work or, in this case, really needing a different language altogether to get any work. Jobs in the tourism industry can be obvious exceptions but relying on one industry for all the French-based employment in the state probably doesn’t go too far. The possibility of grabbing outsourcing jobs that really do require Francophones would be an interesting addition.

Of course, there’s a definite dialect issue. It’s probably akin to using Filipinos for English-language call center outsourcing, or possibly worse. English in the Philippines is almost definitely going to be heavily influenced by American English as we’ve been fiddling around with their country in a big way up to some 50 years ago while French in Louisiana may not have received a significant amount of influence from International French in a very long time–according to Carl Brasseaux in French, Cajun, Creole, Houma, immigration declined a great deal after the Civil War. Instead of just being pronounced differently or phrased a little different, entirely different verbs and pronouns are also used.

Still, it seems worth it for someone to look into this possibility.

Why people hate banks. (Off-Topic)

While I’m on the topic of businesses that don’t seem to understand, why not touch on banks? I like banks. I’ve had bank accounts since I was legally able to open them and I find them useful. I don’t have a particular distrust of them or feel that they’re out to get me or anything like that. In fact, I currently have 3 banks accounts even though I don’t have nearly enough money to warrant that but I don’t see any harm in having them. So my criticism here, of TD Bank specifically, is not simply a matter of having an axe to grind against bankers or a tinfoil hat problem.

I opened an account with Commerce Bank back in the day, when they first opened in the northeast. They had long hours and no fees so it was great. Apparently, it wasn’t great for them as they eventually were bought out by TD Bank who decided to add fees back in. I’ve never had a problem with that. I had to keep $100 in the bank to avoid any fees, no biggie. I even accidentally went below that limit at some point over the years and called them to see if an exception could be made and it was. There was no arguing or anything so I was thrilled. Unfortunately, this wasn’t a case of understanding on the part of the CSR but simply a company policy that the first request of this sort that any customer makes can be granted but then never again.

Years later I no longer lived anywhere near a TD Bank location. I had really no reason to keep my account with them but the minimum fee was low enough that I didn’t care and I had a credit card with them so it made paying that directly from my checking account easier. Whenever I charged something, I’d transfer that amount into my checking account and pay off the balance from there immediately. One day I was doing this and, for some reason, entered $100 more as a payment to my credit card than I meant to. Instead of bringing my balance in my checking account down to $100 it brought it down to $0. An important note here is that, in reality, not a penny of the money I had with TD Bank changed, it was just located in a different place in their system. I realized my mistake and within minutes of making it transferred another $100 into my checking, hoping to avoid the maintenance fee. When my bill cycle came, I was charged the maintenance fee. I didn’t like paying it but it was clearly my mistake and I wasn’t interested in getting special favors to resolve something dumb that I did. And I figured that was it.

The next month came and I was charged another maintenance fee. I called this time because I had already paid this fee and made no more mistakes. The CSR this time was not nearly so pleasant. I spoke to more than one on my mission to find someone who was reasonable and eventually did come across a supervisor who recognized that I was only charged the successive fee because of the first fee brought my account under the minimum amount for a day. She refunded the fee but I e-mailed TD Bank to ensure that this wasn’t simply going to happen again the next month. These are the exchanges that followed (I apologize for their e-mail system managing chronology horribly):

TD Bank Correspondence 1
TD Bank Correspondence 2

I did, in fact, immediately withdraw my money and close my accounts to escape this fee loop.

I’ve wanted to send this correspondence to TD Bank directly at some point with a more verbose description of why I believe this to be ludicrous but, as always, the only e-mail address I can find for the company goes right to the same customer support people who I am criticizing. The wording is so strange. The claim that the bank understands my frustration while simultaneously not recognizing the absurdity of their behavior makes no sense at all to me. I understand that they can’t simply bypass fees for everyone in every instance, that they have to make the customer take responsibility at some point to maintain their capital, but this is exactly what I did. The failure was that they wanted me to perpetually take that responsibility or to deposit more capital for them to work with than the terms of my account required. It’s troubling that I couldn’t make them see how crazy this was and I think this is really why people hate banks. You’re often faced with people who are either not willing to or not able to look at their customers’ issues on a case by case basis. They respond with boiler plates and by quoting company policy instead of thinking critically about what your problem is and considering whether it’s you who needs to adjust or if their system needs to adjust to you. The latter possibility seems to never enter their minds.

I’m sure the result would have been different if I had hundreds of thousands of dollars in my account but why even attempt to run a bank that takes on small accounts if you see them as being more costly than valuable? They were probably glad to get rid of my account as the administration costs incurred through handling my calls and e-mails was probably greater than the $100 of capital I maintained with them for years. But why the charade in the first place? If you’re going to take on these customers, then take them on and treat them like real people. Any costs incurred on my account would have disappeared immediately if they had recognized my issue after the first communication and fixed it completely. That was literally the only call I had made to them in years. They most definitely profited from my small account even if they lose with other small accounts and yet they actively drove me away once I became even slightly an issue.

Banks still have a huge PR issue. People feel, rightly or wrongly, that they’ve run our economy into the ground then took all our tax money to give bonuses to their CEOs. Instances like mine go nowhere toward fixing that relationship. Like I said, I feel I’m a reasonable person when it comes to this topic and I have nothing against banks but an experience like this certainly moves me toward the “you are not my friend” frame of mind when I look at these institutions.

NOTE: I promise that my next post will not consist of more whining. For some reason it’s less time consuming to post this stuff than to compare Marilyn Mason to Cuban rhythms or to analyze the formants of vowels in comparison to tonal harmonic theory in music (these are both on the back-burner).

Our illuminating jester.

So here’s a follow up to the last blog I posted, having to do with Jim Cramer of CNBC suggesting that hedge fund managers should manipulate the market, even illegally, to make a quick buck. Jon Stewart’s interview with Cramer on the Daily Show wasn’t sparked by the same video I posted but that video was used during the interview. The initial reason for all this was Stewart criticizing Rick Santelli of CNBC, who had a little rant on a trading floor about not wanting to pay for the mortgages of “losers”. The bit was criticized by The Daily Show, mocking the fact that CNBC regularly gives bad advice that could very well lead people to be one of these “losers”. Cramer decided to take Stewart’s sarcasm to heart and shot back at him. Everything escalated from there and culminated in this truly uncomfortable interview:

Personally, I loved this. It seems like a lot of people missed the point but I thought it was great. After reading reactions to the show, I found a lot of people talking about whether Stewart or Cramer won this battle or whether Cramer makes bad stock picks or whether Stewart is funny. All of that is completely beside the point. This wasn’t about Jon Stewart or Jim Cramer or even CNBC, this was about the shady greed of Wall Street that is allowed to fester. At one point, Cramer actually says that it’s difficult to come on TV and tell people that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson just lied to you left and right. Why is it so hard to call CEOs and government officials liars when they’re clearly lying? Isn’t this the job of any reputable news organization? Why does CNBC allow CEOs to give them a false reality to broadcast to its audience? This is part of the problem. This is why we have honest people losing their homes, their retirement savings, and their jobs. When Jon Stewart tells Jim Cramer, “This isn’t a fucking game”, you can tell he means it and it’s astounding to me that a comedian is the only person willing to come forward and say this. I don’t know about others out there, but I personally know people who are losing jobs that never did anything wrong. Some of these people have been working hard at the same place for 35 years and because of hedge fund managers like Jim Cramer, complacent reporting, and a world that allowed greed to reign king for far too long, that’s all over.

I guess I just want to make sure that people pay attention to this because you never know who’s next. I’m not against greed, there is such a thing as healthy greed, and I’m not against having a free market, but this is ridiculous.

Jim Cramer of CNBC suggests illegally manipulating the market.

This is amazing. I don’t have time to comment on it and I don’t know what I could say other than mentioning that the SEC needs to start understanding what these guys are doing so they can be sent to jail. Just watch in amazement as Jim Cramer, host of CNBC’s Mad Money, suggests that hedge fund managers should illegally manipulate the market because it will make them money. This guy should be hung by his testicles in the middle of Wall Street.

Did you notice the financial world crumbling yesterday?

I wouldn’t be surprised if you haven’t. It’s very easy and common to have a disconnect from the happenings in the world anymore. So even when we may have been witnessing the biggest financial catastrophe (or the greatest financial bet) in the last one hundred years most of you probably didn’t bat an eyelash. I think that’s a problem.

Yesterday the House of Representatives voted down the financial bail out bill. Some 40% of Democrats voted against the bill as well as the majority of Republicans. The bill failed by twelve votes and the market reacted with the biggest single day point drop, for the DOW, in history. That’s not in the last decade or two, that’s ever. This isn’t the biggest problem though, the biggest problem is that credit may just completely freeze up. Anyone who needs a loan for anything (a house, a car, payroll, to order inventory) may be out of luck. Our credit based economy could very soon come to a halt. Some people have even said that your ATM or credit card may not work anymore. That one is a bit of a stretch but I think it’s worth it to check the performance of your bank’s stock. ING has dropped from $48 to $20 in the last six months so I’ve seriously considered moving my money.

There is a really good side to this. The bet that a lot of politicians in the House are betting on is that doing nothing is doing the most to fix this problem. After all, why should we prop up failing businesses? Maybe we should let those businesses fail, even if it hits us hard in a lot of ways, so that better businesses can take their place. This may even be the best way to keep our market free while giving powerful firms a very good reason not to partake in the shady trading practices that helped get us here in the first place. The bill was going to include oversight on this kind of thing but wouldn’t it be nice if we instead told the market that if they screw up it’s completely on their shoulders? It’s like teaching a kid responsibility. You don’t help them learn this valuable skill by fixing all the problems they create for themselves.

Of course, there are very good reasons for propping these businesses up like I have mentioned already. In the end this all seems like a wild guess at which choice will help the most. No one is crunching numbers to find out and it wouldn’t really be helpful as economics is as much a social phenomenon as it is a mathematical phenomenon. Personally, I lean to the “let the crap fall out” side but I’m regularly going back and forth on the issue. The only thing I know for sure is that you should all be paying attention. As much as we all like to think we live in a vacuum, we really don’t. We elect the people who decide these things and their decisions could decide whether we enter another Great Depression or not. If we do, it’s not the politicians we should blame, it’s the people. We should blame the people who have become lazy and bought into the idea that nothing we do makes a difference. We should blame the people that take the success of their nation for granted and choose to forgo the voting rights that others in the past were willing to die for, whether they were soldiers or just minorities that wanted a voice. In short, inform yourself.

Which side should he pander to?

It appears John McCain really can’t decide whether he wants to pander to hardcore conservatives or moderates and liberals. He has spent the last week blasting the system that allowed the market to become deregulated to the point that we have financial meltdown and now he’s going on television saying that deregulations have helped grow the economy. This really is like the Twilight Zone. You can’t have it both ways. Either regulations were a bad thing or they were a good thing. This is just like when he went on TV and said that he’s an ardent supporter of George Bush and then went around campaigning as if he’s the polar opposite and will bring tons of reform to Washington. I really hope this sort of newspeak isn’t convincing anyone.

The first presidential debate is Friday at 8pm on just about every channel. Watch it.

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