Company Loss More Than Double Entire Australian Stimulus Package In 3 Months
I get daily emails from Martin D. Weiss, Ph.D. in the USA, who runs the free investment email newsletter called Money and Markets.
Aside from some great copywriting — and apparently some quite accurate predictions (I don’t follow it that closely or invest yet because of it) … the news that Martin and his team reports is quite staggering.
It’s run just like Clayton Makepeace’s Total Package — daily emails from a team of expert contributors (that’s not surprising of course, as Martin Weiss’ company is a client of Clayton Makepeace). Good concept that works for both of them!
Anyway, I got this in today’s email:
This morning, Washington announced that AIG, our nation’s largest insurer, lost a staggering $61.7 billion in the last three months of 2008 …
That’s the single largest loss ever suffered by a U.S. corporation, larger than the record losses at Bank of America and Citigroup COMBINED!
Worse: To keep AIG from going belly-up, Washington is giving the company another $30 billion, bringing the total bailout for this one company to a staggering $180 billion.
That’s equivalent to nearly HALF the U.S. government’s entire budget deficit for all of 2008!
Worse still: The company’s stock, which sold for nearly $50 per share last May is now only 49 cents. Any investor who bought $10,000 of AIG stock eight short months ago now as a meager $98 left. The rest — a whopping $9,902 — is gone with the wind.
(the bolding is mine).
And that 3-month $61.7 billion loss by a single company — in Australian dollars (AUD $97.95 billion, according to Google currency calculation today) — is more than DOUBLE our entire $42 billion stimulus package announced by the Australian Government (233 per cent).
(Let’s not have nightmares considering the US$180 billion bailout so far is 6.7 times bigger than our entire stimulus package, for one company!).
Now in the email Weiss goes into more about what lessons aren’t being learned, and his emergency briefing to investors about succeeding in a bear market … but that’s not why I’m posting … if you want to find that out, subscribe for free yourself.
There’s Good News
The good news is, I’m confident from a business point of view there are still masses of opportunity, and giving people the opportunity to make money with proven business systems is as likely as ever to resonate with prospects because that “hungry crowd” is growing virtually daily. And as happens at any time, different industries are affected in different ways.
One of the most important things a business can do right now is get better at marketing — especially if competitors are closing the shutters. Have specific strategies to attract customers, retain them, sell them more (and more often), build referrals and reactive old customers — there’s plenty you can do (and should be doing regularly) with your existing customer list before you even go out looking for new leads and prospects.
(If you’re interested in how I can help you with that, contact me. Given my current workload, I wouldn’t recommend waiting too long to do so).
On the flipside, what is most frightening is that there is no end yet in sight, and the amounts being bandied around in the US are in the TRILLIONS of dollars … at some stage someone is gonna have to pay for all of this! What kind of debt bills are our governments leaving for future generations?
“A billion trillion here, a billion trillion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money …”
Weekly Twitter Tweets at 2009-03-01
- Currently Browsing: http://tinyurl.com/dclnwn Now that’s a dumb thief! #
- Most amusing … what a clever octopus! … http://tinyurl.com/dbkqg6 #
- Finalising the Brunswick Rotary marketing material for the Sydney Road Street Party community stand #sydrd09 #
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Studio Press WordPress Themes
Wordpress theme designer Brian Gardner has teamed up with Craig Tuller to offer the professional (commercial) range of themes under the “Studio Press” banner.
It’s actually one of Brian Gardner’s earlier open source themes that I modified to create this site, I find his themes to be quite competent and practical.
The best thing is that when you purchase a theme, the common headaches associated with free Wordpress themes disappear: you get the theme files, unlimited theme support answered by Studio Press’ experts, customisation techniques with Studio Press’ detailed theme tutorials.
There’s also a list of recommended designers for professional design services to use with the themes (if you’re not using my design skills!).
To visit the Studio Press site and the entire suite of themes (11 at the moment, including the 5 highlighted below): Studio Press.
For each of the themes offered at Studio Press (click each graphic to go to the theme page, and from that page you can view a Live Demo of each theme in action):
