Erik’s Blog: Board Shorts and Business Suits

Many reporters, economists, and wanna be economists are comparing the recent stock market crash to the famous crash of 1929. The crash that marked the start of the Great Depression. The crash that changed America. But is it really the same?

Knowing little about the 1929 crash I haven’t really been able to make the parallel myself. I’ve been stuck listening when I’d love to offer my own opinions. So a few weeks back when I was, surprise surprise, waiting in an airport I stumbled across a used book with a title staring back at me. Rainbow’s End: The Crash of 1929.

I decided to buy the book and begin to read it on my 14 hour journey back to Hawaii from the mainland. The back cover seemed to have rave reviews (which rarely happens on a book cover) and the thought of finally figuring out what caused the stock market crash was intriguing enough.

Turns out it was an amazing book. It reads like a story rather than restating facts in dry collegiate language. It kept me reading and interested in something that most would find a boring subject were it not strikingly similar to todays events.

The author, Maury Klein, writes Rainbow’s End not focusing on the events right around 1929, but rather, builds up to the crash. Starting at the turn of the century. He talks about how the automobile transformed American way of life more than any other invention ever had. Klein focuses on the effects the automobile had on how people traveled and interacted with people, the status symbol a car made, the drive by manufacturers to reduce the cost making it more of an minorly-expensive commodity than a luxury item. And most importantly he talks about how automakers begin to shape how companies did business.

He focuses on one big player, with big ideas, Billy Durant who helped create holding companies like GM to brand different cars and build huge conglomerates. Durant lived the American dream and Klein captures the most pivotal moments of that dream.

He goes on to talk about how banks began to transform. He talks about how America used to be a country of men and women who saved, and worked hard to save some more, but began to turn to country that used credit to purchase things. (sound familiar) Fueled by the automobile, large appliances, and other luxuries, America began to buy things now on want rather than on necessity.

He talks about how banking giant of the time National City began to offer trading of securities all over the US, not just to the wealthy in New York and Chicago. How citizens were talked into buying on margin, and that the market would always go up. How the government sat by as banks were allowed to offer whatever they wanted to customers, manipulate stock as they saw fit, and get away with a lot that today would land you in jail.

The parallels, as you can read from above, are amazingly similar to today. The 20’s built into an enormous bubble of lavish spending that burst in late 1929. While Klein doesn’t go into detail much after the crash, he does talk about Hoovers unfortunate taking over of a market on the verge of disaster and his real inability to use the government to overcome a widespread depression.

If you have any interest in the stock market of today, and wish to learn from the past, read this book. Maybe you’ll be able to read the market better and see why the government is so scared of banks collapsing and people losing all of their credit.

In a year when most stock portfolios are down at least 30% some much more than that you find that most people are adjusting their spending and work habits accordingly. Reports are coming in of shoppers preparing to spend less this year on holiday shopping. Travelers are planning to travel closer to home. And investors are looking to savings accounts and CDs before the Fed lowers rates so low banks practically can give money away for free.

Even with all that, has the economy affected your day to day patterns?

For me, I can say that my wallet hasn’t been affected yet. My wife and I don’t pull income from our stock portfolio which is good, it’s down almost 50% on the year, and we’re still able to get student loans for her and my paycheck is still getting signed. However, psychologically we’re both looking for ways, just like those people I mentioned above, to save money “just in case.”

Save money on gas, which, although it’s coming down in price, still has us trying to plan our routes better to conserve gas. We’re eating in rather than going out. We’re putting more money away in savings every month for a rainy day. And lastly, I’m starting to blog again.

That’s right, I’ve been away for so long I almost didn’t remember how to float images, or transfer blogs between servers, or… But the major difference between last year and this year is that I’ve decided to spend a little more time building content on my many blogs to see if I can increase traffic and get a little extra cash every month for those just in case moments.

It’s not that I have much more time to do so. My 9 - 5 is still a 24/7 job, meaning I’m always thinking about, answering phone calls, or emails (from my phone too), for work. But now I’m trying to make time to blog a little more and get back into the internet thang.

This means blogging early in the morning when I wake up, or blogging late at night before I go to bed. At these times I may read a regulatory document here and there for work just for fun, or gasp… even try to spend some quality time away from work. But, now I can fill that time with creating content that will build my blog network and hopefully increase traffic and earnings as I’ve done in the past.

I think this change will ultimately be good for America. Rather than people expecting to get things now or feel entitled to high salaries, bonuses, and stock options, credit that can buy them whatever they want NOW!, they’ll see that working hard, saving and then getting your reward is how you get ahead and feel success.

So, How has the Economy Affected You?

Why the question mark you might ask. Because if you’ve traveled on an airline lately you’ll know that most people aren’t happy. The workers or the travelers. This is something that I’ve come to know too well. Traveling for work (my 9-5) I’ve gained 1K status on United Airlines. For those of you that don’t know that’s flying 100,000 miles in one calendar year. And I made it in the first week of October.

For some this may seem cool or great, traveling for work, going to different places and I must admit, at the beginning of the year I thought is was too. But 3 months into it I was over it and now after a solid year of traveling at the rate up almost 2 weeks a month I’m getting over it. I live in Hawaii with my wonderful wife, and enjoy playing outdoors.

To top it off, all of my flights are at least 6 hours long!

That’s why I was surprised and relieved when I took part of my last trip and it seemed as though the airlines were full of joy? Every work was kind and approached me with a smile, the plane staff was extremely friendly, behind the counter, same thing! And better yet, on both of my flights I received a pilot card with a little note written on it thanking me for being an elite member. Both legs!

Now the pilot cards are nothing new, every once in a while the stewardess’ will hand them out. But two in one day, plus the happy flight staff, unreal? Maybe there was a company wide meeting at United saying we have to actually care about the people that pay our salaries. I’m not sure. But whatever it is it was great to fly with them.

I just hope it wasn’t a fluke and these people are nice all the time.

By the way, the flight was LAX to IAD and IAD to MIA.

This is only a test. I repeat, this is only a test.

I’ve decided to give a go WPhone wordpress plugin as my mobile blogging tool and see how easy it is to blog. Since I’ve come to spend about half of my time on the road for my 9 - 5 job I needed a way to make blogging easier. When the mood hits me. I’ve become accustomed to emailing from my phone and thought I’d give this a try. Who knows. Maybe I’ll be able to bestow some mobile blogging wisdom on you.

I repeat, this is only a test.

Since I started blogging I’ve gotten to know some great people involved with the online money making world. It all started when a co-worker pointed me towards Steve Pavlina’s Blog and all the money he makes from his pesonal development blog. This was shortly after I had started to play around with some web publishing of my own so the timing was great.

This co-worker then stopped working for the same company and became a freelance webdesigner along with creating other sites that employ writers, photographers, and bring him passive income. At least thats my guess since I haven’t been able to get a hold of him to find out how things are going ever since he decided to bike across America.

I also met some other great people around the blogosphere and had some great conversations and a dinner with a little more known internet entrepreneur, Yaro Starak. He was in Hawaii on his way back to Australia from Canada and I was able to have dinner at a local hot spot on the beach and discuss all things internet. He gave me some great advice, that, although he may not see me following it yet, I’m definitely working towards ideas raised in that conversation. Besides, who am I to go against a proven method that’s working for him.

Also in the mix is my brother. He’s started a clothing line, ASONE Clothing which has been doing well for small startup company. Also while doing that, he’s become somewhat of a wordpress guru. Couple that with his design abilities and he’s perfect for those wanting design work done. Right now his client list is pretty full and his ability to both code, not just CSS, full-on custom PHP and plugin integration as wel, is going to continue to bring him a lot of work. You can check out his budding portfolio over at PaperTree Design.

He also runs a few blogs on the side related to web design and creating buzz for product launches.

All in all, this online crowd is a great crowd to get into. I hope to develop my network more and more as I try and bring more information to the table. Some things I’m helping colleagues with are…

• Wordpress and PHP consulting, focused on custom wordpress applications and design
• SEO
• Starting and building blog networks
• Idea generation