Author Archives: Money Reasons

About Money Reasons

A offbeat personal finance blogger that comes from the tech world.

Why It’s Wrong When Billionaires Try To Destroy Companies

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I stumbled across this article Today on the NYtimes: “Staking $1 Billion That Herbalife Will Fail, Then Lobbying to Bring It Down” and it made me sick to my stomach.

It’s not that I’m a big fan of Herbalife, but the fact that Bill Ackman is shorting the company with a huge position first, and now trying to get it destroyed seems unethical to me.  Herbalife pretty much follows a similar model of business that Avon follows, the reps buy the goods then peddle the goods.  I wonder if Bill will go after EBay sellers too?  They buy goods in bulk and sell them individually on Ebay, or maybe he’s go after any business for that matter that involves selling goods.  I wonder after this he sees dollar signs in his eyes?

I was shocked in the article that Bill spending over $150,000 to get minority leaders and groups to file lawsuits and that he’s basically wining and dining certain democrats in office.

Does this sound a little corrupt to anyone?  I have to wonder if the groups that he’s pushing around realize that he is taking advantage of them?  Moving them like pawns so that he can make big bucks if he succeeds in him company destroying mission?

Where are the 99%ers?  Bill’s move will cost jobs, and opportunities.  Shouldn’t the be protesting him?

I admit, I’ve never tried Herbalife and probably never will, but I know that the dirty acts by Bill Ackman could and may put Herbalife out of business while making him huge bucks.  This is a case of absolute power corrupts absolutely (and apparently corrupts others political and influential groups too!)

Read the NYTimes article if you want to read about a problem 1%er that should be protested!  I guess when an arrogant Harvard-educated investor makes a mistake, being down millions (if not a billion), he lets ethics he learned at Harvard go out the window?

While shorts and folks like Bill Ackman aren’t all evil, ones that go after real companies and ones that are young in particular are doing the world a disservice.

I’m kind of surprised that politicians in particular push his causes, especially when it’s so apparent that Bill primary motive is for profit.  I wonder if those that push Bill’s efforts will get re-elected?

Perhaps they are fooled by the trick below that the NYTime article mentioned.  It’s what I refer to 1 move thinking:

He has argued that he is trying to protect Hispanics, who he says are most frequently recruited by Herbalife as distributors, only to find out that there is little money to be made.

Yet Mr. Ackman’s staff acknowledges that this crusade is really rooted in one goal: finding a way to undermine public confidence in Herbalife so that his $1 billion bet will produce an equally enormous return. Mr. Ackman has said he will donate any profits he personally earns to charity, calling it “blood money.” The clients who invest in his hedge fund, however, would still benefit enormously.

Oh, so on the surface it seems like he is not gaining from the destruction of Herbalife, but it does benefit Bill Ackman’s company and the investors within.  If the investors within realized that this company took a huge loss from the Herbalife short bet, Bill would lose hugely as they exit his company and may even face lawsuits from unhappy investors.  So I would say that he has a huge financial position at stake, but it’s thinly veiled by the donating it to charity proposal.

Read the New York times article By , and ALEXANDRA STEVENSON.

Notice the sign that reads “Stop Exploiting us”.  Now that takes the cake!  if not like Herbalife is forcing people to sell it’s product…  If they don’t like option, it’s not like they are tied to it?  Where is the exploitation?  Makes me wonder if we are all exploited by the world we live in, and if that word “exploited” is being abused by special interest groups, especially when considering the more real usage of the word?

I disclose that I don’t currently own Herbalife stock, nor do I plan to in the next 30 days.

 

Why Does The Media Still Print Stuff About Madoff?

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The man committed a Ponzi scheme of unbelievable proportions…

So again I have to ask why does the media still print what Bernie Madoff says, knowing that he committed one of the largest frauds in history?  Basically hiding the truth for years, as he robbed many a life savings from investors all along…

To me, I would think that the media would realize that Madoff committed a huge crime that alone would demand that anything the man says is not to be trusted and definitely not publicized!  Me, as just a normal Joe, even I would think that the man is just trying to get attention because life sucks behind bars, or even worse, he’s trying to get less time in Prison by creating a story and hoping that somehow he can make a deal with the justice system.  This is a fantasy of a man in prison and should be ignored.  Such coverage and attention paying to Madoff gives the man attention that isn’t warranted.  Shoot, there was a documentary about how Madoff looks for TV and new coverage about himself in prison.  Isn’t it obvious that this is just an attempt to feed his own fetish?

This isn’t the first thing that Madoff has said that was unbelievable, so why should he be believable now?  Does the media channels really believe what he is saying is newsworthy?  Are they really that naive, don’t they realize that printing such garbage lessens the respect people have for the media channel?

Don’t believe this garbage out there about Bernie…  Madoff is just playing with everybody for his own jollies.  Be the smarter person and ignore any Madoff news or better yet, write to any Madoff news media outlets chastising them of their folly in covering this horrible man!

Sad times…

 

 

Are Computerized AI Agent Telemarketing and VRS Systems on the Rise

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So what do you think?  Are Computerized A.I. Telemarketing and VRS systems on the rise?

We all know what Telemarketing is, but what is VRS?  VRS stand for Voice Response Systems, and basically is the automated response and menu system you get when you call your bank or other large companies.  It’s the front line of such systems.  While VRS systems are not horrible, most of us like to talk to a real human being.

Have you noticed lately that you’ve been receiving telemarketing calls for surveys and the like where the agent sounds human, but after the call ends you realized that you questioned whether the person you were speaking to was a live human?

The call actually sounds like a normal person at the other end but something was a bit to perfect with the exception of an almost undetectable pause in their response?  By undetectable pause, I’m talking about a pause that maybe be 1 second or less.

Usually followed by the pause is an answer to your question that may have interrupted the speaker/A.I. computer agent during the call.

Unfortunately, I’m rude like that and interrupt the speaker as they are speaking.  The typical sequence is a small, almost undetectable pause followed by a perfectly spoken response with that matches the speed and tone of the original message perfectly. My argument is that such a response is not normal and highly questionable.

So what’s wrong?

An unscripted response should not be followed by a slight pause and a perfectly executed response to what the original pitch was.  To me this makes me think of a computer voice response system, but more sophisticated than what I’m use too.  The latest VRS system responses sound more like Apple’s Siri than a real human.

This makes me curious if telemarketers, customer service and other call centers are the next human labor pool to be attacked by technology?

So how did I recently make the jump from an A.I. telemarketing Survey VRS to the potential attack on a labor?

Well basically because if technology can create an A.I response system that acts and responds so human-like, they can eliminate the human element of a customer/participant services system.  Of course if the customer that called in request to speak to a supervisor, manager or someone else, the system could transfer such calls to a skeleton crew of humans to handle the hypothetical heavy lifting.

So what is my statistical estimate/guess on who such a system could affect the hiring of humans for customer/participate services?  Well it would depend on the size of the customer service / participate services department (obviously).  But let’s take a simplified customer service model and say that it has 100 people in their human resource pool.  I would guess that at least 60 of those 100 jobs could be A.I. agent based and the number would continue to improve as the technology improves over time.  I could even imagine that at some point during the following 5, 10 or 20 years after such a system is introduced that the number could even go as high as 90 A.I. agents instead of human agents.

Think 90% of a VRS as A.I. agents is too high?

It might be, it really depends on what the A.I. Agents are representing and the complexity of the responses.  But I wouldn’t be surprised that in the future A.I. Agents will query their responses from some type of private IT cloud VRS system per company.  I also would be surprised if the entire agent presence would be cloud based too.  Why have a cubicle for an A.I. agent when the entire A.I. agent instance is somewhere out in the cloud?

Such a cloud mechanism will have a direct impact on existing offshore Voice response systems.  After all the voice could be tailored to the area that the phone call is coming in from.  What do I mean by this?

Let’s say that you are from Scotland, and you call into a VRS.  Well, if the company has the bucks to buy the best computerized system, it should respond to the caller in the language or speech pattern that the native from the area would find the most agreeable.

What’s positive about A.I agents instead of human labor?

  1. Privacy and security.  The A.I. agent won’t talk to friends about your account especially if you are even a little famous, but more importantly you are pretty much assured that your account information will remain private through the conversation with the A.I. agent.
  2. No bias responses and pure systematic responses.  You could screen at the A.I. agent and you won’t hurt it’s feeling or make it do something nasty to your account.  Although at some level you must feel pretty silly yelling at a computer, no?
  3. Cheaper products?  With all automation and computerization processes, such a change would mean that a company could lower their prices on their product a little.
  4. Reduction of lawsuits and other problems with labor.  An A.I. agent doesn’t ask for a promotion.
  5. Potential less errors and recorded sessions for review.  Some team will randomly sample conversations to continue to improve the responses by the A.I. agent.  Less error in that the A.I. system could eventually be better at deciphering what a hard to understand caller might be requesting.
  6. Cost should be cheaper than the current offshore advantages.  With customer voice dialect and language, such a system is incredible versatile, even more so than the current offshore advantages.  As such systems become more prevalent and computer, A.I., cloud and robotics technology continues to become more powerful and cheaper at that same time such systems might become many more times cheaper than the cheapest labor pool.  I’m talking 1 to 100 or 1 to 1000…  Such a system that is could based could become scary cheap!

I have to admit, with the advantages that I outlined above, if I were a company, the appeal would be pretty obvious.

We are truly living in both exciting and depressing times!

Thanks for reading,

Don

 

 

If you are interesting in my original views on the way technology is hitting us, read: Pros and Cons of Automation.

 

 

I think the MyRA will be a poor investment option

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myRA…  Let me start by saying that it looks like is should sounds like it should be pronounced Mira, and that’s not necessarily bad, but it definitely doesn’t look like it should be pronounced “My IRA” like I’ve heard the president say during the State Of The Union address.

Okay, why don’t I like the MyRA option?

To me is seems like a lame “bond” Roth IRA…  mostly because it’s a bond!?!  According to most financial authors, a young worker should not be in bonds!  Bonds are what old retired people use for a fixed income solution, not to be used by workers that need capital appreciation and growth!

Next reason I don’t like it is because it’s guaranteed not to lose value.  I think we’ve seen what happens when the government guarantees things… I’m not even going to mention the big city names that declared bankruptcy lately… Instead look at the prepaid tuition credits offered by state college savings plans, oh wait are there any of those left anymore?

Well at least we have social security and it’s solid… What, it’s not?  Then why doesn’t the government fix that first for the young workers of tomorrow?  Oh, it’s doesn’t make sense financially and the distributions may have to be reduced or some other radical changes made?  Oh… sad…

Since Social Security isn’t quite defunct yet, why have they decided to create something that seems like a poor investment option?

Well at least the Affordable Care Act is solid and error free… what’s that?  Oh in it’s current form, it kind of bites and has unforeseen errors both now and later.  Being in technology, I’m pretty sure on the back-end, there will be more errors discovered (but probably not communicated out to the public).  The front end is just forms for information collection, so if they messed that up, then the back-end must really be crappy.  Based on what I’ve heard the “Affordable” part of the title doesn’t make much sense, but I’m mentally wandering off topic so it’s time to get back to the topic at hand.

Okay, I don’t like myRA and I think it’s a poor investment option, but so what.  There are plenty of poor investment options and this is just another mediocre member of that crowd.  Hopefully most young people will be smart enough not to waste there time on such an option.  Especially where there are plenty of good Roth IRA options that only require a initial investment amount of $1000 or less if you look for them.

I think the guarantee is bad since people should learn to take sensible risks.  You see America was founded by taking risk all the time, practically every company in the USA was created by people willing to take a sensible financial risk.  Risk is part of reward and having an option without sensible risk is teaching young people a bad lesson in my opinion.

Financially, the myRA is better than nothing, but the problem is there is stuff out there already that is way better than nothing!

The Roth IRA is the way to go, and I’m sure anyone reading this article knows that already, but in case you don’t know where is why:

  1. Based on previous history there is a better chance that an investment in an stock index fund will outperform a bond option
  2. If you get in an emergency or some kind of tight bind you can withdraw all the money you contributed (but not the earnings if any) in a Roth IRA both tax and penalty free.  While this is an advantage, you must realize that the money should not be touched if possible!
  3. A Roth IRA serves multiple purposes… like a tax shield for dividends (most dividends anyway) and future capital gains in the account, an emergency fund source, etc.  (read Roth IRA – Unusual Benefits for more)
  4. In a Roth you can invest in stocks (commonally called equities), mutual funds, etfs and other options.  Isn’t diversity the spice of life?

The Roth IRA makes the myRA a poor investment options for working folks and especially young working folks!  I understand a myRA could be a gateway route to fund a Roth IRA, but I think the low return vs equities will discourage most people from participating.  I could be wrong though, but why not keep it simple and just get a roth IRA up front?

If you are thinking about going the myRA route, I think you should really think about the pros and cons.  To me it’s a dead option out the gate if you have any financial savvy or education at all.  That said it’s still something and I applaud the POTUS for providing such an option, even if I think it’s a poor choice and shouldn’t be used.  It will be interesting to see if it really gains in popularity…

What do you think,

Don