The old lost-productivity shtick, right? Right:
Filling out the brackets has become a sacred ritual in almost every office in the country. A Microsoft survey last year found 58 million people will fill brackets out, many at work and on the clock. The estimated cost of the lost productivity is $1.8 billion.
This is about $31 per bracket-filler-outer. Hell, we use up that much worth of paper every day when we’re not filling out brackets.
An observation from last year:
I have no idea what would happen if I overdrew my checking account, and I’m not particularly interested in finding out.
I opened a new account this spring, and one of the questions I posed to the New Accounts guy was “What’s the overdraft policy?” They said that they’d cover a small one, albeit with a fee, unless I specifically opted out.
I’m not really worried about this — I’ve bounced only one check in the past three decades, and the only time I’ve ever had a debit-card transaction declined was when I miskeyed my PIN — but I’m wondering if maybe I should be. After all, I was dumb enough not to inquire as to what my debit card’s daily limit would be.
There’s a line in the Temptations’ classic “Ball of Confusion” to the effect that “Politicians say more taxes will solve everything.” Not much has changed in the forty years since, though Stacy McCain observes that a smaller percentage of us seems to be paying them:
In 2008, there were 48 million IRS tax returns with zero federal tax liability, so that more than a third of all Americans are getting a free ride.
Of course, FICA/Medicare aren’t mentioned on the return, unless you overpaid FICA for some reason, so that ride is perhaps a tad less free than it seems.
On the other hand, if you are one of the lucky ones, if that’s the term, it’s good form to regret it:
Uh, including me — because I’ve got six kids and blogging hasn’t yet become the lucrative gold mine of a six-figure income. But maybe if you hit the tip jar, we can get me off Uncle Sam’s tax moochers list.
Eight personal exemptions plus standard deduction (married filing jointly) would equal $40,600, so clearly McCain isn’t making it rain like Scrooge McDuck.
I mentioned earlier that the tax on the palatial estate at Surlywood had jumped up a bit for 2009, mostly due to an increase in the actual millage, since the value on which the tax is based didn’t go up a whole lot. It occurred to me that this might cause a substantial upward adjustment (current euphemism for “frickin’ ginormous increase”) in the monthly outlay, and since the mortgage holder normally calculates these things in March, I figured I’d send in the March house payment with an extra $250 or so to keep the escrow account from looking like a Federal deficit chart.
Score this as a temporary Connivance Fail. The payment duly arrived on the first of March, as it’s supposed to, but they ran the escrow analysis on the 27th of February. Which was a Saturday, and since when do bankers work on a Saturday?
Oh, well. When the property tax goes up for this year, as I assume it must, I’m prepared.
Canada is getting rid of paper money, or at least the “paper” aspect of it:
They say money doesn’t grow on trees. Well, the federal government has taken that adage to heart — it announced earlier this week that Canada’s paper-cotton banknotes would be replaced by newly designed plastic ones next year.
It’s part of a plan to modernize and protect Canadian currency against counterfeiting.
The new plastic bills, made from a polymer material, are harder to fake, recyclable, and two to three times more resistant to tearing, the Bank of Canada said.
If “will not jam the soda machine in the breakroom” also makes it to the list of advantages, and I suspect it will, I’m calling for Washington to follow Ottawa’s lead here.
Yours truly, in the summer of ‘02:
I would hate, of course, to write one huge check [to the IRS] in the spring, but if the government can be forced into fiscal discipline, well, so can I. Now, while we’re on the subject, can we throw FICA into the mix?
Make every working man cut three checks to Washington every April out of their own bank accounts and you’ll see a vast, seismic shift back towards limited government and fiscal conservatism. Directly paying income tax, social security and medicare/medicaid straight up would be a stunning eye opener to most working citizens.
Assuming the states that impose income tax followed suit, I’d be shelling out somewhere around $12,000 right about now, and the language here would be far saltier. Count on it.
Jimmy Buffett, you’ll remember, once ended a song with “And I know it’s my own damn fault.” I doubt Warren Buffett spent a whole lot of time wasting away in Margaritaville, but it’s clear from his letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders [pdf] that he knows where the buck stops:
For many years I had struggled to think of side products that we could offer our millions of loyal GEICO customers. Unfortunately, I finally succeeded, coming up with a brilliant insight that we should market our own credit card. I reasoned that GEICO policyholders were likely to be good credit risks and, assuming we offered an attractive card, would likely favor us with their business.
We got business all right — but of the wrong type.
Our pre-tax losses from credit-card operations came to about $6.3 million before I finally woke up. We then sold our $98 million portfolio of troubled receivables for 55¢ on the dollar, losing an additional $44 million.
GEICO’s managers, it should be emphasized, were never enthusiastic about my idea. They warned me that instead of getting the cream of GEICO’s customers we would get the — — well, let’s call it the non-cream. I subtly indicated that I was older and wiser.
I was just older.
During the period of heavy TARPage, in fact, GEICO sent out a letter to policyholders to the effect that inasmuch as the bank they’d hired to manage their MasterCard was busily slicing credit lines left and right, you might want to consider moving to a competitor’s card. (I got this letter; they did not cut my line, but they imposed a stiff annual fee and raised the interest rate a couple of ticks.)
I’ve got to believe that the ability to learn from his mistakes played a major factor in propelling Buffett to Richer Than God status, though how I’d get there, I haven’t a clue.
(Seen at Fritinancy.)
My bank balance being not quite as low this past week as it usually is, I noted yesterday morning that I’d actually earned a cent in interest, the first such income in a year or so.
Interest rates being what they are, it’s possible I could earn as much as half a buck by the end of the year, which of course will be taxed. And in the 25-percent marginal bracket, assuming that the tax application will round it up to the nearest dollar, I’ll have to pay a quarter in tax on that 50 cents of income, rich bastard that I obviously must be.
Steven Lang picks up eleven certified crapmobiles for $8500 or so. Why? It’s just that time of year:
I bought them because I needed to fatten up my dealer auction for next Tuesday. Will it work? You bet.
We’re in a time of year called, ‘Tax Season’. This is the time of year where most independent dealers will make their fortunes. From late January to late May Uncle Sam will be throwing over $300 billion in overseas supported currency into American hands. The single mom with three kids and a $16,000 income? Her tax return will border on the mid-four figures. I’m not here to rationalize income redistribution or toe the political lines. But I will tell you straight up that when it comes to cars, money and bullshit are in full swing this time of year.
Most of that ‘money’ will be gone within a week and will go to either one of two things. Electronics or a car. The cost of most used cars at the auctions usually go up about 20% to 40% this time of year for one simple reason. They sell. Even the lowliest of vehicles can find the loftiest of returns during tax season.
I wonder if the price of big-screen TVs goes up during the same time frame. Of course, the pivot point is not going to be the middle of April, the end of Tax Season, but somewhere during the first few days of February. Think “Super Bowl.” I’m guessing demand is very high just before, and remains fairly high for a few weeks after that as people decide that their existing hardware was simply insufficient for the proper appreciation of beer commercials.
One thing is certain: the guy in the plaid jacket will be more than happy to take your tax-refund check, and I assume that a smart mechanic will be able to spruce up even the crappiest of cars to a condition that insures they’ll run at least long enough for someone to sign on the dotted line.
The Consumerist lists reasons for filing one’s tax returns online, and this was the one they listed first:
Your return is processed faster and your refund, if you’re due one, is sent faster. The IRS states that if you e-file and opt for direct deposit, you should expect your return in about three weeks. If you have a simple return, you can expect a refund in as few as eight days. If you file a paper return and opt for a paper check, it will take eight weeks. Getting your tax refund (last year’s average tax refund was $2,700) faster means you get access to it faster.
Part of the reason for the delay in paper returns is because they need to enter your data manually, which increases the probability that someone makes a mistake. When you file electronically, you skip this potential mistake.
If you’re not due a refund, as I wasn’t, this might seem uncompelling, and indeed, after three years of filing online, I reverted to paper this year, on the dubious basis that I’d rather send the Feds a check than let them into my bank account. This makes no sense — obviously they had access during the years I was getting a refund — but taxes, I suspect, drive a lot of us in the general direction of irrationality. (Yes, you can put them on plastic, but there’s a fee.)
That said, I mailed my return to Fresno on the 15th; the IRS managed to cash my check on the 24th.
And really, if you do owe, there’s no advantage to paying two months early, unless you just want to get the damn thing off your plate. Which I did.
One of the more exasperating aspects of 42nd and Treadmill is the fact that our customers are a blabby sort, and if one of them manages to sneak something past the Gods of Customer Service, eventually it goes viral.
To keep costs down, we aggregate credit-card transactions: rather than constantly being on the horn to the merchant bank in East Fiji, we bundle a bunch of them and send them in batch format. (Apple does something vaguely similar to this with the iTunes store: they’re not going to make much of anything with a 99-cent Visa transaction, so they’ll save yours up for a couple of days until you have a respectable $3.96 or so before putting it through.) Downside: people have figured out the cycle, and are buying stuff, discovering that MasterCard won’t cover that much, and then calling in to switch to some other card — even somebody else’s card — before the hammer comes down. It never, of course, occurs to them to check with the issuing bank before they start spending the money they don’t have.
What annoys me, though, is not so much the extra work they generate, but their farging sense of entitlement. Quite apart from their well-rehearsed “You did it for [so-and-so],” there’s a self-righteousness to them that makes me want to take their cards and bring them into close contact with certain internal body tissues of theirs. (Yes, I have gloves for tasks like this. Why do you ask?) It’s probably just as well that they don’t let me talk to the miscreants personally.
Simon Property Group, the nation’s largest operator of shopping malls, has bid $9 a share for General Growth Properties, the #2 operator, currently languishing in Chapter 11.
General Growth is worth more than that, bankruptcy notwithstanding, says their biggest shareholder:
William Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital Management LP, General Growth’s largest shareholder, said in December the stock is worth $24 to $43.
Of late, it’s selling for $13 or so, which suggests the possibility of a bidding war. And everything isn’t necessarily going to come up roses for Simon:
Simon and General Growth have overlapping portfolios in areas including Chicago, Dallas, Houston and the New York-Northern New Jersey region, which may lead to “oversaturation” in some areas.
Include Oklahoma City on that list. Simon owns Penn Square Mall, the city’s largest by sales; General Growth owns Quail Springs Mall, the second-largest. (Quail Springs is actually about 70,000 square feet bigger, but both malls exceed 1 million square feet.)
Now for some guesswork. At the moment, Penn Square has a waiting list: tenants want in, and there’s no room. There seems to be no such issue at Quail Springs. If Simon took over Quail Springs, would it be upgraded to Penn Square standards (and, presumably, rents)? Would the stores that are patiently waiting for Penn Square space accept spots in an improved Quail Springs? Or would Simon, deciding that one regional mall is quite enough, thank you very much, starve Quail to death?
For the moment, though, General Growth has given Simon the cold shoulder, prompting Simon to threaten to withdraw its bid if GGP doesn’t respond.
New management at the Chilean mint, following a minor misprint:
The general manager of the Chilean mint has been sacked after thousands of coins were issued with the name of the country spelt wrongly.
The 50-peso coins — worth about 6p — were issued in 2008, but no-one noticed the mistake until late last year, the BBC reported.
Instead of C-H-I-L-E, the coins had C-H-I-I-E stamped on them.
Of course, things like this never happen in the United Snakes.
(Via Tim Blair.)
In 2006, I wrote more or less approvingly about the Chip & PIN system used for debit cards on the Continent: “Customers are issued ’smart’ cards with an embedded chip and a four-digit number, and instead of signing the slip at the point of purchase, they must enter that number directly into the terminal.”
Maybe the cards are pretty smart, but the system as a whole apparently has some ghastly lapses:
The flaw is that when you put a card into a terminal, a negotiation takes place about how the cardholder should be authenticated: using a PIN, using a signature or not at all. This particular subprotocol is not authenticated, so you can trick the card into thinking it’s doing a chip-and-signature transaction while the terminal thinks it’s chip-and-PIN. The upshot is that you can buy stuff using a stolen card and a PIN of 0000 (or anything you want). We did so, on camera, using various journalists’ cards. The transactions went through fine and the receipts say “Verified by PIN”.
Simple hardware deficiency? They should be so lucky:
But the real shocker is that it works online too: even when the bank authorisation system has all the transaction data sent back to it for verification.
So it’s the specifications of the protocol that are at fault:
These specs consist of the EMV protocol framework, the card scheme individual rules (Visa, MasterCard standards), the national payment association rules (UK Payments Association aka APACS, in the UK), and documents produced by each individual issuer describing their own customisations of the scheme. Each spec defines security criteria, tweaks options and sets rules — but none take responsibility for listing what back-end checks are needed. As a result, hundreds of issuers independently get it wrong, and gain false assurance that all bases are covered from the common specifications.
While this system is used in some parts of Canada, it’s not in use in the States. Alex Knapp at Outside the Beltway notes:
[T]here’s been some pressure to move in the direction of this system. Personally, I think that banks here might consider a more secure system.
Or at least try to figure out how to plug the holes in this one.
Well, this year’s offering to the Internal Revenue Service is completed and ready to mail.
And I mean mail. Last year’s online adventure didn’t cost very much, but it took almost two hours to complete. I got to wondering how long it would take me to do this by hand, or at least with the DeskJet serving up copies of forms, and I did the whole shebang, 1040, 1040V, Schedule A, Schedule M, and Oklahoma 511, plus the Alternative Minimum Tax worksheet (which proved to be unnecessary), in fifty-eight minutes flat. For nothing but the cost of postage and consumables.
Disturbing aspects of this year’s return:
Well, isn’t this sweet: Sixteen percent of respondents to a Fair Isaac survey would not consider dating anyone with a FICO score of 700 or less. (One percent, in fact, will insist on 800 or more.)
And this question came up: “When dating, when should you disclose your financial situation?” Says this same survey:
While the majority wait a while to discuss finances with their partner, men were nearly twice as likely as women to discuss finances right away.
Especially, I suspect, if they show up with a FICO below, oh, 699 or so.
(Via Sex and the 405, which I’m pretty sure refers to the San Diego Freeway, not the Oklahoma City area code.)
The NFL Players Association, James Joyner suggests, is not your typical labor organization:
An NFL franchise employs 53 players (45 of whom may be active on game days) plus up to 8 more on their practice squads. There are 32 franchises, so that’s 1440 regular players plus 256 practice squaders who make a relative pittance. That’s not a lot of labor for a multi-billion dollar a year industry.
Like actors and musicians (who are also represented by unions) the marquee talent get most of the money paid to workers because they’re the draw. While using a different welder on a car frame won’t impact Ford’s bottom line, substituting an attractive brunette from the local community theater for Sandra Bullock, the guy who sings on the street corner for Prince, or Joe from the docks for Peyton Manning would significantly impact ticket sales. Similarly, the bottom dozen players on the roster — who Bill Parcells referred to as JAGs for “Just A Guy” — get the NFL’s version of minimum wage, as do the bit players in films or the session players on music recordings.
Admittedly, bit players don’t make much — most members of the Screen Actors Guild earn less than they’d make working at Carl’s Jr. — but “the NFL’s version of minimum wage” is, for the season just ended, $310,000.
The NBA, which has only 450 roster slots — fifteen for each of 30 teams — pays even better: $457,588 is this season’s minimum salary. Players in the Developmental League earn peanuts by comparison, though players already on NBA rosters who are sent to the D-League continue to draw their NBA-level salaries.
That said, there are some similarities between the various Players’ Associations and traditional trade unions:
Sports owners have been forced by labor laws and court decisions to bargain in good faith with their players. It wasn’t all that long ago that even superstar players had to accept whatever the boss deemed fair. And the various player’s unions have negotiated better working conditions, pension plans, injury settlement practices, and minimum scales for rookies and veterans. Further, the ability to negotiate these things collectively rather than on a player-by-player basis has doubtless made some things easier for owners, too.
Indeed. And the current NBA agreement ends in 2011; there weren’t that many changes from the 1999 agreement in 2005, but this time around, the owners are reportedly taking a hard line in an effort to control costs. Last time they did that, nearly half the season was wiped out.
The old 401(k) is up a shade under 14 percent for 2009, which means I’ve made up about two-thirds of the 2008 loss. None of the components showed a loss, though the small sum invested in traditional money-market funds earned a meager, but predictable, 0.19 percent.
Once I cash in the proceeds, I figure I have enough to live on for three, maybe four weeks. The fund manager thinks I need $60,000 a year in retirement income, which I suppose would be nice, since I’ve never made $60,000 in any year of my life; I assume they’re expecting some major inflation between Now and some so-far-inchoate Then.
LeeAnn reported her Visa card missing, and oh, the fun she had:
“Frank”, in deep Southern accent… southern New Delhi, I mean: “Good afternoon, madame, my name is Frank how may I assist you?”
Me: “I seem to have misplaced my card and I need to report it.”
“Frank”: “Ah yes, you have not taken the care and have displaced your valuable credit card, is this correct?”
Me: “Uh… yes, sort of. I didn’t do it on purpose.”
“Frank”: “But you are of the calling to remind me your card is gone, is this correct?”
Me: “Right, it’s missing and I need to cancel it and get a new one.”
“Frank”: “So you would of like to receive a new card for the one that is valuably lost not to be found again?”
Me: “Yes, Frank, I need a new card. Please.”
“Frank”: “Would the insurancing of this new card be wanted to prevent unwanted charges and occurrences on this, the new card to replace the card that was tragically gone to the missing, yes?”
And so on, and so on, and scooby-dooby-doo. Finally:
[A]nd today I got my new card in the mail … with exactly the same number on it.
It is of an unclearness with regarding of the concept, we would be thinking, yes?
Some of the economic lessons we’ve learned from playing Monopoly:
Winners are determined by random chance early in the game. If you land on Boardwalk the first time you are living large. Otherwise it is low rent forever.
You can’t do anything to encourage patrons to visit. They either roll your number or they pass you by.
If you can just make it to the end of the board, someone will hand you enough money to keep you afloat.
Some people can buy their way out of trouble and others are stuck in jail no matter what they do.
I could swear I’ve heard this before from [insert name of politician].
This 2003 piece on “titanium” credit cards was titled “Make mine zinc.”
American Express would like to make yours zinc Zync:
The basic card costs $25 each year and includes participation in the Amex Membership Rewards points program, though it does require you to pay off your balance every month. You can choose from among four “packs” that yield extra goodies. The Go pack, for instance, costs another $20 annually and doubles the points you earn on airfare. The Social pack has the same price and doubles points for restaurant, concert and theater purchases.
The company plans to introduce more packs soon and perhaps tweak the existing ones, depending on the feedback it’s soliciting in an online community called the “Zync Tank.”
Of course, Zync isn’t designed for me, and I already have an American Express card anyway; it’s intended for that particular subset of twentysomethings who still think semi-clever respellings are kewl.
Still: you heard it here first.
I have no particular animus toward generics, but there are times when I demand a brand: my ketchup is Heinz, my corn chips are Fritos, my fish sticks are Van de Kamp’s.
And when I do dishes, Dawn takes grease out of my way, because this is the alternative:
Dishwashing liquid: It all looks soapy and reasonable, it all smells citrusy/flowery/cleany and capable, it all comes in the same-look packaging … and there the similarities end. The generic/store brand of this stuff will squirt cheerfully out of the container, sink to the bottom of your … sink (I really am this witty, don’t hate me, ‘kay?) and promptly disappear, leaving one or two bubbles in its wake like the weak farts of genteel old women in church. If you do manage to whip up some frothy semblance of suds, the very second you turn your back to get that bargain-soup encrusted saucepan they will simultaneously pop and flatten out into a thin scum of wanna-be cleansing.
To be fair, there is an upside to the store-brand detergent:
However, some of these cheapass faux-soaps, when decanted into little glass bottles and displayed on the windowsill, make kind of pretty sun-catchers. So that 99 cents wasn’t a total loss, huh, pumpkin? Don’t you feel better now?
So does strawberry soda, and you can get a couple of liters of it for under two bucks. More if you buy the, um, generic.
In fact, you can’t even get it unless you actually have some gold, or are willing to buy some:
The Gold Bullion Card™ is a credit card that operates based on the value of gold. It looks the same and can be used the same as a traditional credit card. The underlying value is gold rather than cash.
It is for people who own gold bullion coins and wish to build a credit line without relinquishing ownership.
The Gold Bullion Card™ is also great for people who want to start buying gold coin without losing the ability to use the value of the gold coins on a day-to-day basis.
Getting started apparently is simplicity itself: you stuff your precious metal into an envelope, ship it up to their storage facility, and they determine its value, which in turn determines your credit line (per their quick-and-dirty calculator, 75 cents for each $1 worth).
Apparently there are multiple banks handling this card; the online application is forwarded to the one closest by. If you’re closest to the Ferengi Alliance, you’ll presumably be expected to provide gold-pressed latinum as collateral.
(Via CardTrak.)
Daleela Farina of BloggingStocks perhaps doesn’t like financial writer James Altucher: her interview with him is titled “You can profit from James Altucher’s insanity.” She doesn’t succeed in baiting him, however:
BloggingStocks: Since you clearly oppose post-secondary education as stated in your New York Post article, “School of Hard Cash,” suggesting that our youths should find their entrepreneurial spirit and get experience starting new businesses instead, how does the recession affect your conclusion?
JA: The recession makes my conclusion stronger. Why should I fork over $200,000 to my kid (probably much more by the time they go to college) so they can emerge four to six years later, saddled with debt and more confusion than ever about what they should do with their lives. The costs of college have gone up 10-fold while cost of living has only gone up 3-fold and health care has gone up 6-fold in the past 30 years. Congress should be debating education reform rather than health care reform.
BloggingStocks: And the stats: Given the lack of banks’ willingness to lend — a decrease of 36% to be exact, which, some may argue, could be attributed to the 11.9% default rate of those loans; small business failure rate exceeding 95% within the first 5 years, and over the lifetime of the average small business only 39% are profitable, 30% break even, and 30% lose money; why do you believe uneducated, inexperienced adolescents can beat these horrible odds?
JA: They can’t. They will most likely fail. Failure is the best education. Best to get it done with as young as possible.
“Good judgment,” said Will Rogers, “comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.”
Of course, we’re still going to need rocket scientists and such, so someone is going to have to finish college, but right now, the most immediate need, as I see it, is to see that Congress gets an education.
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Long before the Seattle SuperSonics landed in Oklahoma City, as predicted here way back in 2005, I was calling for some sort of tie-in with the Sonic drive-in chain, whose world headquarters is within walking distance of the Ford Center.
Sonic apparently has now seen the wisdom of such a deal, and has signed one — though not with the Sonics-turned-Thunder:
Sonic Drive-Ins has signed on as a sponsor with the Milwaukee Bucks for activities during Bucks home games at the Bradley Center.
Sonic said Wednesday it will get signage around the Bradley Center, including a courtside display, LED displays and backlit panels in the concourse. Sonic also will have a presence at the Bradley Center with its Cherry Limeade character appearing at games along with the Sonic roller skaters.
There are three Sonics in the Milwaukee area, with a fourth on the way.
Some Salvation Army bellringers now take plastic:
Last year, the Salvation Army experimented with new buckets that were equipped with wireless credit card readers. In Colorado Springs, Colo., one of the two cities where they tried out the buckets, donations rose by $64,000, an 11% increase over the previous year. While only $5,000 of this came directly from credit cards, it seems likely that some of the increase in cash donations may also be a result of the machines. After all, with shoppers unable to fall back on the no-cash excuse, it’s harder to walk away.
This year, the Salvation Army has expanded the card reading bucket program to thirty cities. The machines, which take Visa, MasterCard and American Express, also allow no-fee debit card transactions. According to the charity, the machines tend to inspire larger donations; this may be partially due to the fact that they issue a receipt, which tax-savvy givers could apply to their deductions.
You can’t even talk to these farging people:
Based on “a routine credit check due to increased usage of your cards”, they were chopping my credit line by ~25%.
Called them up and found out that the reason for this is that their “credit check” shows a $6,000 phantom; they’re claiming I owe them the balance transfer amount (correct) but also claiming I owe it to the two smaller cards that the transfer paid off (no longer correct). In other words, they claim I have roughly 40% more debt than I actually do. Not only that, but based on this erroneous information, they just damaged my credit score by reducing my available credit, making it that much more difficult for me to do other credit-related things. This actually took two calls; the first person, who I will refer to as “bubblegum-chewing blonde bimbo #1″, simply kept going round in circles saying “well if the computer program says this is what we should do this is what we do”, and hung up on me when I demanded to speak with a manager. The second person, who I will refer to as “Useless Tyrell #2″, basically repeated the same thing, then informed me that “all the supervisors are unavailable” and that he would “put a note in my file” and one of them should give me a return phone call in 48 hours or so.
I think I’ve actually talked to one of those, um, individuals myself. Not that it made the slightest bit of difference. Then again, you already know what I think of these practices.
Previous Malevolent Scum activity here.
International supervillains have it so much easier than the rest of us, notes Catherine:
I set up the international bank transfer to pay the rent deposit on our apartment in Paris. It wasn’t super-difficult, but there are a dozen steps and boxes to fill in, so I wonder how evil megalomaniacal movie villains manage to transfer funds so easily on screen. They must all be bankers in their spare time.
(Eventually, the permalink for the above quote will be here, but not until the first of December or thereabouts. You read someone for a decade, sooner or later you figure out [some of] her routines.)
One of those things that Everybody Knows is that public expenditure for professional sports is a crummy deal, that whatever money comes in — and it’s always less than projections — ends up by design in the pockets of movers and/or shakers.
Just the same, the NHL’s Columbus Blue Jackets are circulating a study which asserts that the development of the city’s Arena District — the Jackets play in Nationwide Arena, the centerpiece of the District — has put $2 billion into the local economy since 2000. Maybe, maybe not. The Urbanophile, for one, is skeptical. But he’s prepared to argue that the traditional return-on-investment model is not really applicable in these instances:
[W]e should look at it as a marketing and branding expense. In effect, when cities pay hundreds of millions of dollars to team owners to put a franchise in their town, what they are really buying is naming rights to the team.
Consider, for instance, the cost of advertising:
How much money do advertisers pay to get their names on TV? A 30 second Super Bowl ad is $2.7 million or so. That’s what Budweiser pays to get 30 seconds of air time. But when the Colts were in the Super Bowl, the name “Indianapolis” appeared for a heckuva lot longer than 30 seconds. Think about what you would have to pay the TV networks to put your name on the screen and on the lips of the commentators (even that jerk Chris Collinsworth, who has always hated the Colts) as often as “Indianapolis” appears. The price tag would be staggering.
And you have to figure Columbus would like to get a piece of that kind of action. The Blue Jackets actually made it to the post-season in 2008-09; playing for the Stanley Cup doesn’t score anywhere near as many impressions as playing in the Super Bowl, but what’s a small city to do?
This also helps explain why small cities subsidize sports so much more than big ones. It’s not just about big market vs. small market revenues. Bigger cities aren’t as dependent on pro sports to get their brand message out.
Columbus, as it happens, is a hair bigger than Oklahoma City. Then again, the MAPS projects in this town, it is claimed, have brought in $5 billion, and while a goodly portion of that showed up before we ever got an NBA team to call our own, cakes do need icing, and maybe an occasional Bud to wash them down.
I did my Saturday run to the supermarket, and parked, as is my occasional wont, roughly halfway between the door to the store and the ATM on an outlot; the idea was that I would walk through the ATM’s drive-up — I never can seem to reach the darn thing from an actual car without coming too close to the concrete pillars protecting its edges — and then ambling up to do the shopping. There is an ATM in the store, but it belongs to Some Other Bank (Member FDIC), and I figured I could walk a few yards to save two bucks in service charges.
I withdrew my cash and looked at the receipt just long enough to check the balance, which was about a third what I thought it should be. Passers-by might have noticed the storm clouds forming on my brow.
I bought about two-thirds of what I’d planned to buy, got back in the car, and contemplated the upcoming Highly Denunciatory speech I’d be making to the bank for this grievous offense. I’d even figured out what had happened: payday was Wednesday, which means, technically, after the close of business Tuesday, and Tuesday afternoon I’d paid a metric buttload of bills through the bank’s online service, having noted that the funds were already marked as “available.” Something happened to the ol’ Direct Deposit, I reasoned, and since all those bills were sitting there in the Pay queue, the bank duly paid them, and then slapped me with a series of overdraft charges for the ones that exceeded the balance already in hand.
Arriving back home, I put away the groceries and then fired up the browser. The bank site reported that, after the ATM transaction, I had exactly as much left as I thought I was supposed to have. This spawned some incoherent babble along the lines of “holy flurking schnit,” at which time it occurred to me that maybe I should read the damn receipt again.
Which wasn’t even mine. Card number — last four digits, anyway — was different, amount withdrawn was different, balance remaining was different. A mixture of Saturday sun and accumulated bile evidently had blinded me.
I duly called the bank and informed them that their transaction processor and their receipt printer had somehow gotten out of sync; the young lady duly took down the report. (Who knew there was anyone named “Colleen” in Bangalore?) And with that, I retreated to the smallest room in the house, verifying the truth of that old “scared spitless” business. Of course, it’s not really “spitless,” but it rhymes with it.
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