There are real and workable solutions out there, but the media works in collusion to ensure those solutions are either not broadcast at all, or if they do get broadcast then they are quick to criticize the idea.

Whether you like what Ron Paul has to say or not, I would argue that he at least has something fresh to say.  It’s a viewpoint that contradicts the status quo and seems to be based on common sense.

Jon Stewart does an excellent job of putting this all into perspective.

Last weekend, the Iowa Straw Poll was conducted.  Here are the results of the poll:

As you can see, Michele edged out Ron Paul by a meager 152 votes. Seems like a very respectable finish by Paul. Were is the media love?

The National Inflation Association (NIA), however estimates price inflation in the U.S. to be at least 5% and for food inflation to reach 10% in the first half of 2011.

This could mean the the dollar menu at McDonalds will be the $1.10 menu by June of this year! This also means that your money will buy less at the grocery store, at the gas pump and everywhere else that you spend it.

Whether you like Obama and think he is doing a good job, or not, it is time to really confront the effects that are being caused by the massive bailouts and federal deficits.

NIA estimates that we could easily see overall real U.S. price inflation rise into the double-digits by the second half of 2011. This will erode our standard of living and is, in effect, an indirect tax on our income.

The only solution is to generate more revenue to stay ahead of the inflation. I recommend 3 tips to combat the impending inflationary pressures:

1. Pour the coals on your sales & marketing efforts.  Drive your revenues up!
2. Systematize your business processes to increase efficiencies and reduce expenses.
3. Implement systems to monitor the results of your sales, marketing and operations, analyze your results compared with your targets and prior period performance, plan how you will improve the performance and TAKE ACTION to execute your plan.

If you are interested, I wrote a more detailed article that reviews the raw stats related to the fed bailout which you will find at the following link:  QE2 – A prescription for hyperinflation?

After the Fed recently announced their plans to begin a new $600B phase of quantitive easing, or QE2 as it is commonly being referred to, a lot of people have voiced up their viewpoints.

As some of my readers may not know what quantitative easing is, let me give a basic description of it.  QE is a way for our central bank, the Fed, to increase the supply of money in the economy.  They do this by purchasing government debt with money that they create out of thin air.  For example, they call their buddies over at Goldman Sachs and say they want to purchase $600B of US Treasuries.  Goldman puts the treasuries in the Fed’s account.  Someone at the Fed then sits down at a computer, makes a banking entry to create $600B in their bank account and then transfers that amount to Goldman’s bank.

Once Goldman’s bank receives this “new deposit”, it becomes part of their bank’s reserves which they can then lend out up to 10x that amount – essentially, this new deposit could create $6,000,000,000,000 ($6 trillion) of new debt/money in the economy.

Based on a report from the Federal Reserve in May of 2010, there is approximately $940B of currency (paper money) and coins currently in circulation.  The Fed also reports that approximately 2/3rds of that amount is physically outside of the US.  So based on my calculations, that means there is only $310B of currency and coins in the US.  Therefore, if Goldman Sachs decided to withdraw this newly created money, they would only be able to withdraw half of it and that is assuming that all dollars and coins were removed from all pockets, wallets, purses, home safes, cash registers and bank vaults.  Okay, this would never happen, but I thought it was an interesting example to illustrate just how much $600B actually is.

After I started really looking at this, I became more interested, so I went to the Federal Reserves website and downloaded the actual monetary stats for the past 25 years.  As most of you know me as a business intelligence consultant, it is probably no surprise to you that I dumped this raw data into Microsoft Excel and began analyzing and graphing the data.

Following is a graph of the Monetary Base (paper money and coins in circulation plus the electronic money the Fed creates with their computers, as described above).  The graph shows a nice steady increase of the monetary base from October 1985 through September of 2008.

Hum…  I was expecting for a spike in the M2 graph at the same point in time the MB spiked.  Not only do we not see a spike, you can actually see the rate of growth of M2 actually slowed down around October 2008.  Okay, so the Fed thought they would “stimulate” the economy with QE1, but it actually slowed the growth of M2 down.  Some of you might be wondering, “how the heck can that happen?”  Glad you asked.  The following graph answers that question.

As I mentioned earlier, the banks can basically lend out 10x the amount they hold in reserves.  Therefore, the M2 Multiplier is a gauge to see how aggressively the banks are lending.  Back in October of 1985, M2 was 12 times larger than MB.  The graph clearly shows us that the following decade the multiplier drops to around 8, which it stays at for the next decade.

In 2005 it begins to rise a bit for 2 years (possibly the rise of lending before the real estate crash), but then what the heck happened in October 2010?  The multiplier basically gets cut in half!  This is where the banks thanked the Fed for QE1, but chose to hold that money in excess reserves, rather than lending it out to America’s businesses.

So what will the graphs look like after QE2?  Obviously there will be a spike in the Monetary Base (MB).  It will jump from its current value of $1.987 trillion to approximately $2.6 trillion.  That is a growth rate of 30% in one year!

The bigger question is, “What will happen to M2?”  At this point, nobody knows.  Will the banks hoard the money, like in QE1?  Will the banks start lending again to keep the M2 Multiplier at 4.4?  If they do, this will expand M2 by $2.6 trillion.

There is a growing group of people who think the Fed is sending the US economy down the path of hyperinflation.  If the banks hoard the money, then I don’t really see that happening.  But, what will happen when the banks remember that they make more money by lending more money?

What if over the next several years they move that M2 Multiplier back up to 8.  Based on a MB of $2.6 trillion, that would make M2 $20.8 trillion.  Considering M2 is currently only sitting at $8.7 trillion.  That would be a 240% increase in M2!

Inflation is simply more money chasing the same amount of products.  This causes the prices of products to increase with the increased money supply.  At 30% increase in the money supply would undoubtably create price inflation.  A 240% increase in the money supply wouldn’t create inflation, it would create hyperinflation.

In a report published by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis in October 2010, the following was said about the potential effects of QE2:

Growth of the M1 and M2 monetary aggregates accelerated sharply after the Fed began QE in September 2008, but then declined as banks increased their holdings of excess reserves. If banks decide to hold most or all of QE2 as excess reserves, there would be no corresponding increase in the money supply and, consequently, no increase in inflation.

That’s a big “if”.  I personally think the Fed is playing with fire.  What do you guys think?  I would love to read your comments below.

Why would I write about methodology in a technology blog? In many cases, technology is not your problem – it’s methodology, or should I say a lack of methodology, that is really causing you the problem.

Technology is used throughout a business and in each area there is a standard methodology or a body of practices, procedures, and rules used by those who work in that particular discipline.  This disciplinecould be sales, marketing, accounts payable, accounts receivable, cash management, order processing, inventory control, human resources, business intelligence and the list goes on and on.

Ideally, you want to discover and use what is referred to as best practices for that discipline or field.  Many of you might be saying – Duh!  Yeah, it might sound like common sense – actually, it probably is common sense, but I will tell you that I have seen my fair share of companies, from small businesses to Fortune 100 companies that ignored this common sense.

For example, I see many companies rush out and buy software to create scorecards and dashboards.  Yet, they don’t have a methodology on which to utilize those scorecards.  Sure, they end up with pretty web pages with traffic lights and gauges as the following scorecard illustrates.

But what do the red, yellow, green colors really signify?  What should be done when the colors change?  What should be done if the colors don’t change?  Is there a cause-effect relationship between two or more traffic lights?  What is that relationship?

If a methodology such as Balanced Scorecard was adopted prior to implementing the scorecard project, one would be in a much better position to answer the above questions.

Similarly, let’s say a company decided to implement a new CRM(Customer Relationship Management) system.  There are several CRM systems on the market that have best practices built into them.  Companies that don’t necessarily have a strong methodology in place might consider purchasing a CRM system with the intention of implementing its proven practices.  There is nothing wrong with that, however if the methodology employed by the CRM is vastly different from the methodology employed by your company, you will benefit by first understanding the methodology and training your workers on it, prior to implementing the new technology.  Otherwise you will most likely end up with too much change and a failed deployment.

Technology can be a powerful business differentiator especially when it is powering a best-of-breed methodology.  I think you will find the time invested in understanding the methodology and training your users on it will give you a much higher ROI on your technology investment.

In future posts, I will share more examples of methodologies and have some of my business associates share their best-of-breed practices in various fields.  Let me know if there are certain fields that are of interest so we can cover those.

I don’t know about you, but the idea of blogging has been nagging me for years. I’ve resisted the urge each time. I finally decided to take a deep look at it and, since you are looking at the blog, I obviously decided to start.

In my consulting business and during interactions with entrepreneurs, business owners and executives, I find that there is a lot of confusion, anxiety and at times disdain for technology.

Some companies have invested a lot of money in technology to only be disappointed in the end when it doesn’t do what they wanted it to do. Other companies have invested money in technology only to leave it on the shelf. There is a lot of underutilized technology out there. Maybe we can uncover some of this value and raise the ROI on existing technology investments.

Some of you reading this blog know me, but others probably have no clue who I am. To add some context to this post, I will share a bit of my background. I put myself through college as a stockbroker at a major discount brokerage firm. The interesting thing is that I got that job, not because I wanted to be a stockbroker, but because I was an active trader and loved the concept of having my own trading terminal on my desk, receiving an employee discount on my commissions and oh, the paycheck? Yeah, that was a nice bonus on top of the perks. After college, I started an accounting firm, which morphed into a CFO-for-hire firm, which morphed into a boutique mergers and acquisitions firm.

Smelling the foul odor of the dotcom era, years before the bubble burst, I decided it was time to get out of corporate finance and morphed my company once again, this time into a technology consulting firm. With my background as an entrepreneur and financial consultant, my firm was able to bring a very different perspective to our technology consulting and development projects.

Although corporate finance runs through my veins, I must say that the technologies for optimizing the entire sales and marketing funnel are highly interesting to me. They are actually currently a passion for me. Especially in today’s economy where companies with a well tested, monitored and optimized sales and marketing funnel can pick up market share while their competitors sit on the sidelines waiting for the economy to improve. I am currently working on some exciting developments in this area and hope to share them with my readers soon. Ok, enough about me – you can always click on the About and Consulting links if you want more.

What I hope you will get out of this blog is a different perspective on technology and how it can be used to improve individual productivity as well as companywide performance. I will use traditional blog posts, but will also incorporate video blog posts to help better illustrate concepts.

What I hope to get out this blog is to strengthen old relationships and build new relationships with entrepreneurs, business owners, executives, fellow consultants and other bloggers. Since technology is only helpful when it is correctly implemented, my hope for this blog is to help current projects and foster new projects. Let’s be blunt – blogging is a lot of work and a big commitment, so my ultimate intention is to gain new business.

I would like this blog to be helpful to the readers, so I encourage comments and other feedback. I know there will be varying opinions and viewpoints as different issues are discussed. I encourage the varying viewpoints to be shared, because we can all learn something new and benefit from looking at things in different ways.

Some of the areas that I am interested in are business intelligence, business performance management, enterprise content management, enterprise information management and … well, I think you probably get the idea. I like technology that allows companies to manage the mountains of data and information, turning it into actionable insight.

I look forward to your comments and input.