Category: Economy

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More coffee….. We all need it some days.

Since I’ve moved into my new place, I have a conundrum for the ages.  As a drinker or better said a former drinker of outside coffee because I was too impatient to wait for the coffee pot , have the coffee cool down than make it into an iced coffee. I’ve bought coffees from almost every major company that served iced coffee.  But as the years press on and the coffee gets watered and cheapened its getting very hard to make a choice , Now i can’t blame the companies , Its more over the franchisees . There are problems all around, They have crazy employee turnover and skip on machines in order to earn more money.

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Formally, You’d have well trained employees that could manipulate the machines , now they just do whatever the hell they please when making coffee. For the milk and cream containers they have straws that need to be cut to a certain length , You just do not see that anymore, also the portioning has gone fucking nuts. Dunkin Donuts for explain if you ask for extra sugar , You summon the Brimley god and have to sign a contract.

WilfordBrimleyI’ve said in other post that i’ve sort of cracked the enigma code of ordering from dunkin donuts, if you look at the receipts they do not list regular sugar/ Medium sugar /Extra sugar/Extra super Diabeetus sugar.  If you watch the cash register when you order a coffee you will see the coffee droid press the Sugar button with a fix amount of sugar 1 2 3 4 5 6 sugars normally, I’ve seen these go higher. For the poor souls that do not know this system and ask for extra extra sugar they normally get this in there coffee!

SugarThere maybe a dunkin donuts under that pile! After they get a bulldozer to check where it is .

Honey Dew on the other hand 95% of the time they are fairly good repulsing the Brimley god away, Even asking for extra sugar the does not quake with the Eventual resurrection of the Brimley god.  On a rare occasion at honey dew though you will get a new worker that makes the mistake of it but they are whipped tortured and appeased to the brimley god so he does not rise. My only problem with honey dew these days is travel time. I walk or ride my bike so its a little bit of a huff to get to my preferred coffee. Though my bike was just stolen not too long ago. So my options are not really that great right now due to limited travel and health issues and being disabled does not help me get a bike .

imageccsStarbucks ….. Is …. Special , there is no way about this, they are just damn special.  The last time I attempted getting coffee from there was a failure on all levels. Ten monkeys on miralax had a better chance of getting my coffee, I walked in thinking hey no line, A guy working on a particle physics book and 5 workers…. I thought to myself “this just might work” The person in front of me ordered a simple coffee and I thought this will be quick.  I have no idea of the mental breakdown between five workers and two customers could reach critical mass this easy. So after standing around watching these coffee baristas in action, THis is where all things started going down hill. Out of the 5 coffee droids 4 had short outs and the register droid was broken as well. The order was made and from Cashout to coffee serve was longer than 10 minutes. I have never seen so many question in my life about an order and I tried to be patient. While Starbucks is a bit higher in price i was  ready to pay the premium to avoid Dunkin Gonuts.  Wrong move there, I should of just rolled around in coffee grinds while forcing K-cups into my eyes. I ended up leaving ten minutes into this exorcize of watching how coffee is made by professionals.

 

imageszzThis was the final straw, I’ve gone to making my own iced coffee. Sure it has a learning curve, but the money savings are excellent. In 3 weeks i’ve only bought myself coffee outside the house 2 times and both were goooooood.

bruce-almighty-its-goooodYou can make your coffee any damn way you want it . Even if you want nuclear death coffee or coffee that you can mess with genetics with and rewrite the base of the universe. Overall i’ve spent 10 dollars on making my own coffee and its worked out really well.  I keep perfecting  my coffee to the taste i want. which is pretty much Stronger than all of the coffee shops aaround without tasting like burnt donkey ass (starbucks) Coffee Flavored Water (dunkin)  Or A fairly ok Coffee for day to day that i miss (Honey Dew) .  But the savings are extreme by making your own coffee…. I’ve likely been saving somewhere around 5$ a day by avoiding coffee shops.

 

Note: this post was made at 4:30, I’m half brain-dead.

With a new place to live i am testing more ways to make coffee and trying to replicate drinks from coffee places and see what I can come up with.  I have pretty much nailed down iced coffee to perfection of what i want.

 

In two and a half weeks my wallet is also noticing that i am saving money on my attempt to make my own coffee,  From my own math so far in 2.5 weeks if i had gone to a store for coffee everyday I would of spent over 70.40 in coffee , Thats fucking insane,  Since I’ve started this i’ve spent less than 15$ for coffee and still have half a bag left.

I am curious to see where this goes and see how much of a savings there is by the 21st of this month… Lets see…

Coffee post to follow up shortly!

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The price of coffee and you.

About 3 years ago the price of coffee went up in all the coffee places around, which was understandable due to the market price of coffee went through the fucking roof.  now that the markets are going back up yet again chains are putting there coffee prices slightly higher, the problem is the prices never went back down when the price of coffee (commodity) went down.93b697f3caee4a86d9e698bf9d3fbac4Yes the prices have jumped for year 2014 but look at the price in 2011 , we should of seen a decrease in those prices. I know someone will say BUT WHAT ABOUT ALL THE OTHER PRICES. Oil has stayed somewhat stable but what ever the fuck they do to increase on that is always a mystery, its like someone goes “SHIT the suns out SOMEONE INCREASE GAS PRICES QUICK!” . Milk prices are slightly up and there is a multitude of reasons for that that could get its own post, but considering the milk to coffee ratio it would have a lesser effect on the total price.

Funny-Money-45A lot of the times companies find the easy way to raise the price of things is “insert random thing happening here to a small portion of the total that really doesn’t have on effect on the thing in question”. Bob shit himself again.. RAISE PRICES! of all the times I’ve read about oil refinery fires and how they are going to spike gas prices , doing a little research you find out that said refinery is only responsible for 0.1% of total fuel production, that makes you go WTF are they making there?  It seems every other commodity market has gone into the practice of manufactured disasters or some sort of market manipulation to increase prices.

 

CWT financed ten rounds of herd retirements from 2003 to 2010, during which CWT was responsible for removing over 500,000 cows from production, reducing the nation’s milk supply by approximately 10 billion pounds…. By the end of the program in 2010, it was responsible for a cumulative increase in milk price revenue of $9.55 billion.

That resulted in a class action suit for price fixing. Since its not about supply and demand, its more over about money and more money.  So at this point I’ll stick to making my coffee at home.

 

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Wells Fartgo and the idoits who run it and shake down old people.

It’s been awhile since i have typed up something on here and I’ve made it a point to catch up and get something on here.  I’ve been dealing with a mortgage company from hell or pretty close to it and, it does take a lot of time.   I’ve tried to reason with this company , I’ve tried pleading , I’ve even tried to get them to realize this mortgage was flawed from the inception. It’s gone to the point of throwing lawyers at the bank and seeing if they will listen, Ironically they are trying to play deaf, dumb and, blind to said lawyers.  Rather than replying to any request the lawyer sends out they in turn reply to us and try to scare the hell out of the people in this house by sending people to “check if the property is occupied” it is alright.

The first instance of these so called inspectors ended up with a man trespassing on to the property and recanting on how he “beat his son and went to jail for breaking his arm”.  he’d also went on about responsibilities and such to my mother, I was not home at the time and It only was made known a few days later to me.  Now fuckstick stuff like that and being a representative of a large company hiring thugs sounds like something out of a movie plot that Brian De Palma would direct. That said alone it is a threatening posture to take . he Was told to leave the property and while being told he continued to keep taking pictures of the yard inside the yard and inside the garage. Now I don’t take nicely to people trespassing on my property nor masked threats, You don’t treat people like they are shit nor to you recant your life as a criminal when you’re representing a company. Calls to wells fargo went unanswered or passed off to different departments, and treated as if it did not happen.

The Second incident took place Not more than a month later. Again a person trespassed into the yard and was either looking around or otherwise , When confronted he went to his car and sat in the car with the windows up, when confronted the person would not identify who they are and what they were doing. After a momment that person put down there window and said “HI” and than pulled out almost hitting the person trying to get some identification from this person to who and what they were doing, since all they leave on the house is an envelope with a phone number in it. unknown to asshat whom almost hit someone he has been caught on camera and pictures exist of the incident.

I was livid and called the number in the envelope and asked when since wells fargo was trying to corner the market on murder, to which the person said sorry and said there was nothing that could be done since it was a third party , My ass…. They are hired by wells fargo and they control what these little droids do.  Its nothing short of bullying and scare tactics in order to scare the people whom have mortgages with the company, I’ve fought my way through this and if i even started on the fraud that wells fargo has done I’d have to rename this site Wellfargofraud.net.

It has got to the point where if i call my own mortgage company they will not talk to me in ANY details about anything other than pay us money , if you want information from us its Subpoena only.  I was forced on to the mortgage, I was defrauded on the Initial application and since 2008 I’ve been trying to confront this issue to which wells fargo(wacovia) has categorically ignored any and all communication from me and will only talk to my mother.  to this end I’ve sacrificed almost any credit i have in order to keep this house due to this scam of a loan.  Wells Fargo/Wachovia/World Financial has got away with defrauding almost every American out there and with the foreclosure fraud settlement they have basically got away with murder without as much as a slap on the wrist.  36 billion is a drop in a bucket the size of china when it comes to how much they have invested into derivatives / oil / securities and everything else.

I could write all the issues i’ve been having in this post but I think I’d overrun the internets bandwidth in doing so with this company and how they treat people. So I will save it for another couple of posts….

 

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Hey AT&T would you quit blowing smoke up peoples asses… I mean really…

I’ve  been passively watching the attempted merger of T-Mobile & AT&T , but what they are saying would make someone more angry than the hulk on crack.  They keep saying this merger will create jobs and to a tune of 100,000 jobs and that’s a right out lie. The point of a merger is to combine ones interest and take the brand over to make it there own. In this video AT&T is claiming that 96,000 jobs will be created. What?

By the two companies merging there will be overlap of positions, overlap of coverage , overlap of just about everything and logically there’s no reason to keep employees on the company that your merging, Logistically if AT&T blowing smoke out there ass since T-mobile USA supposedly employs over 40,000 people. if this counts all the store droids in all the malls and mobile stores is a good question. but how is this going to create these jobs. Since this is a narrow field there is going to be a huge amount of overlap.

in malls you would have AT&T stores next to new acquired AT&T stores that were formally T-mobile. in all over time the parent company would see no use to having these stores together, and likely break lease and fire all employees, While AT&T is playing the “hot” card for job creation when you look at the big picture- the jobs lost while likely have a big effect on what jobs are created. There are other things in play , AT&T is generally regarded by some as terrible, the T-mobile customer base will erode on acquisition, Also the longer this merger stays in limbo the more damage that’s done to T-mobile and to an effect I think AT&T likes it because , if the company goes critical they will *Sweep* in and be the *her0* .

If there is any job creation at all it will be skilled labor and not sales force that will be VERY temporary at best.  Retail locations might get held for a short time to fluff the books on saying they “Created” jobs and as soon as the merger is complete most of these employees will be laid off.  With the limited pool of jobs in these companies it will likely be a clusterfuck of lay-offs as soon as the ink dries.

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The Price of Coffee and You.

In the last couple of years you may have noticed that a cup of coffee is not exactly cheap anymore. What used to be under $2.00$ is now over $2.50 or higher.

This is a many part problem, on the one hand you have weather and whatnot but that does not affect the longterm supplies as there is always next year and so on. On the other hand you have the stock market which is now played like the worlds largest and most expensive slot machine. In the end Both hands play together and effect you.

When a crop of coffee is destroyed and mass media picks it up they generally don’t play the news in a way that is helpful to the average person . instead they go on a just about myspace approach and say “OMG COFFEE GOT BLOWN UP ZOMG THERES NO MORE COFFEE OMG PRICES RISE!!!”  well the problem with that is its one crop in some place in the world. But, if you take the news at stock you’d be going “shit… thats going to hurt.”  Coffee is grown world wide. From the National coffee association of USA Coffee is grown in about 50 countries . In the last year coffee commodities  has have rose about 70% due to speculators looking for a pay-off with any commodity.  The problem with that is speculators tend to  buy up the coffee at unheard of rates than force the price up , the problem is that people that don’t even sell coffee have the ability to buy up coffee in the stock market, I could see if they had a limit cap on this but they don’t many other foods fall into this trap where they get bought up and sold and resold to the point of insanity.

Soon the only way to get a good cup of coffee is bleeding your self to death at a blood donation center, Giving blood is not a half bad idea but.. the price of coffee should not require you to give a damn kidney.

I’ve never liked the idea of speculators, because of the control they can assert over a market. Commodities should have some limit cap to outside buyers that have no reason to purchase coffee. to lock speculators out would be a bad thing but, limiting the damage they can do in the whole scale of things.

the reason i say limits is it makes the market much harder to game and force the prices way the fuck up .

Even dunkin donuts knows a bad thing when they see it

“Something as simple as a good cup of coffee at a fair price is under threat today because of intense pressure by hedge funds and other speculators,” said Ed O’Rourke, chief procurement officer for Dunkin’ Donuts National DCP LLC, a franchise-owned cooperative that handles purchasing and distribution to more than 6,000 Dunkin’ Donuts and Baskin Robbins outletsnationwide, in a Dec. 14 letter to the CFTC.

Honestly,  it seems like the stock markets are based in fantasy as far as the “Recovery”, and speculators are NOT helping things .

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Drowning…

I’ve had a Crazy last couple of months and I’ve been working to save my house and Its just been one sacrifice after another and its getting to the point I’m burying myself in debt.

After having surgery and working to keep the house afloat its just been to the point where I do not know which way is up, currently my debt is shooting up past $4000 . I wish i could get myself  out of this hole and be done with it but right now my focus is trying to get the house back to normal.

Its part of the reason i’ve not really posted in the last  couple of months.  its hard enough to retain sanity trying to Stop skidding down the road and being not able to pay creditors. as much as i don’t want to I’m going to put a donation button up in the random case that someone out there can help. I just don’t know what to do anymore.





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Do you want some water with that Oil?

If you look at the focus of this GoM oil spill BP  is only focused on sweeping this oil spill under the rug.

reading from CNN.com

BP vows to ‘clear every drop of oil off the shore’

Nice out of sight out of mind maneuver, they have been dumping dispersants on the surface to make the oil sink… the thing is the oil is still there. The Gulf of mexico is not a rug.

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Media.. A bit late for halloween and early on april fools about the economy.

<!– @page { margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } A:link { so-language: zxx } –>I’ve been following the economy for awhile. Yes, we are in a bad downturn but, what gets me is the media.. Rather than being somewhat neutral to the issue they are betting on the apocalypse. There aim has me confused. rather than trying to see both sides of an issue they are aiming for getting average Joe into a clustfuck frenzy. Take Time Magazine for an example.

The 171 banks on the FDIC’s “problem list” encompass only about 2 percent of the nearly 8,500 FDIC-insured institutions. Still, the increase from 117 in the second quarter is sharp, and the current tally is the highest since late 1995. (See pictures of the stock market crash of 1929.)

OK.. first off 171 banks out of 8500 A whole 2% (2.011%).. WOW… but look at the eye-catcher here. “See Pictures of the Stock market Crash of 1928” what the fuck? stock market.. ? yet the article is speaking about FDIC insured banks?  Why not just throw in some pictures of nukes while we are at it .

Reading further into the article you will also see.

The FDIC said total assets held by troubled institutions climbed from $78.3 billion to $115.6 billion — a figure that suggests that the nation’s top 20 banks aren’t on the list, even though they are getting slammed, too, by the growing credit crisis. The FDIC does not reveal the names of the institutions it deems troubled. (See pictures of the recession of 1958.)

Nice even though the top 20 banks are not on the list we would like to remind you something that happened 50 years ago k thx. Sure the economy is in a downturn but due to deregulation and other things the market to my belief is overinflated the fuck outta. Big businesses have been having a field day trying to break down things and increasing the cost of everything , Im surprised they have not added a device to count your farts for some sort of health diet.  The way the banks have gone I saw it coming but I was never sure when this was going to hit , Back about 2 years ago i was getting credit card applications on a daily basis and when i saw this I only thought to myself “this is going to end well”. The banks got themselves into this situation and now they are screaming for help when what they did came back to bite them in the ass like a bear chasing a man coated in beef and Honey.

What is Ironic to me is rather than help the people who are directly affected by this the banks got bailed out and the people who have lost there houses have not, So what the hell. I mean thats like helping out a drunk driver rather than the person he hit. Honestly this 700billion dollar bailout stinks like hell and more and more companies and businesses are jumping on the ME TOO bandwagon even though they have caused these issues on there own,  Car makers… Rather than make fuel efficient cars they kept coming out with beastly huge ass cars that got 0.1 mile to the gallon, when oil peaked this year they did not adjust there strategy to cope with the situation.

If you follow crude oil prices they had at least 5 years of forewarning. Other car makers adjusted around the time oil started spiking, and they are not nearly as bad off as US car makers. Oil companies keep posting these all time record profits and yet every time they say it has nothing to do with them ripping off people by gouging them which makes no sense.

My opinion here.. Sure it sounds bad but, Let these companies fail. its a hard lesson but rather than propping them up Every time they decide to have drunken bender of loaning out billions to people who honestly could not afford it, i think the banks should have some responsibility here. Same with the Car companies. Every time i hear bailout these days I cringe because, these bailouts are not working as intended. Bail out the average Joe rather than these companies. Don’t even put the money in there hands just say hey your mortgage is payed for x months, and give them a contract that says they have to either straighten up finances or get out of dodge.

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StarSucks Closings


Been too long since i’ve last updated but i caught this little bit in the new, From the boston globe that Starbucks isn’t doing so well.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – One coffee drinker’s bad news is another coffee drinker’s good news, it seems.

Financial woes at Starbucks Corp <SBUX.O>, which is planning to close 600 underperforming U.S. stores, is evoking glee and little sympathy from aficionados who say they resent the coffee shop giant and favor small independent cafes.

Its sad to see coffee places close but as far as starbucks goes.. I cant really give any sympathy myself for this.  There expansion was at breakneck speed and in the end it was there own fault.  I’ve been in Starbucks on Occasion , When theres no other coffee within miles. But you can see why Starbucks fucked up, google maps shows it perfectly.

Like why the hell are there 3 starbucks within 2000 feet of each other. Its like someone went on a bombing run of Providence with Starbucks all in a straight line.

seriously there cant be that many uppity people in providence that need there starbucks that bad. but there way of putting up stores is just bad.

I’d hate to say it but if you look at dunkin donuts its much more logical than starbucks…