MEK provides visit support for senior Taiwan diplomat

The MEK Group was privileged to provide media and public affairs support for the Indianapolis visit of senior Taiwan diplomat Joseph Wu (top right) in late January. Weston Sedgwick (left), MEK's director of public affairs, secured statewide media coverage of the visit and coordinated the diplomatic visit's meetings with Governor Mitch Daniels and Indianapolis Mayor Ballard. The MEK Group was honored for its efforts with a gift of perssimon-shaped crystal, signifying an ancient tradition of forging strong fortune.

AST test adds to celestial road rage

With four million pounds of space junk in the form of dead satellites, leaking booster hulks and trash from previous missions hurtling around the earth in low orbit, the American satellite-dependent economy faces some serious challenges. When the People's Republic of China military demonstrated its new anti-satellite capacity by atomizing an old weather satellite in 2007, many experts believed it was a deliberate and alarming demonstration. The successful attack increased the known space junk debris about 20-30% (see above computer-generated image - the red dots represent the new China debris; the green dots represent existing active LEO satellites and space trash).

I wrote about this and more in my Chicago column on MidwestBusiness.com earlier today. If you care to read more, go to: http://www.midwestbusiness.com/news/viewnews.asp?newsletterID=18757 for the 1-31-09 edition of "The Hoosier Coefficient."

Blunting the Psychology of Recession

Market securities powerhouses say we’re in a recession, and the thunder of exiting investors already echoes.

But in reality, what does that mean? Considerable evidence exists that many prolonged economic downturns – read “recession” – come about through self-fulfilling prophecies. Believable pundits transform negative retail and durable goods data into fearsome oracles. If millions of Americans respond with a strengthened faith that the sky is indeed falling, then yes, Virginia, we will indeed be in a recession by virtue of collective consumer behavior. Fearful of perceived major losses, businesses and everyday people will postpone major purchases and stop buying overpriced cups of coffee. The ripple effect thus takes its dreaded economic toll.

Having been through seven service recessions, two in Indiana and five in Southern California, my concern focuses on the carnage that businesses unnecessarily wreak on themselves when talk of a potential recession reaches fever pitch. Fear of the unknown freezes hires, R&D budgets, cash reserves and investments in growth. When that happens, major opportunities start sliding by. In Indiana, just when everyone seemed to finally awake to the fact that a manufacturing-centric economy is actually not a bad thing, I’m waiting for rhetoric to heat back up about how the Hoosier state needs to kick its manufacturing dependency once and for all.

Consult any strategic planning resource and you’ll find that making and executing fear-based decisions typically does not lead one into prosperous times. Few will quarrel that with high energy prices, a decidedly weak housing market and burgeoning unstable food costs, Indiana faces more than a significant economic challenge or two over the next 12-plus months. But what actually do we have to outright fear?

Consider this: unremitting demand for highly qualified information technology professionals is possibly the highest it’s ever been in the state. These jobs often pay triple the state average. Real overall unemployment has bottomed out. Worldwide demand for Indiana’s agricultural products remains enthusiastically high, with Pacific Rim countries even clamoring for leftover Dry Distiller Grains (DDG), the byproduct of corn ethanol production. Hundreds of new promised jobs from sustained economic development are rolling out. With this as a backdrop, a different view emerges. Should we possess intelligent concern? Absolutely. But, please, let’s not indulge in self-fulfilling recessionary groupthink.

A half a century ago, when major recession fears rolled through the late Eisenhower years, Time magazine cited a major bank president’s view: “Psychology,” the national banker said, “is the joker in the economy’s deck of cards.” If we buy into fear, we can fashion a very real recession right out of an otherwise sound economy.

So that leaves Indiana businesses with the quintessential binary solution set: indulge in fear-based frenzy, or live in the moment and seize opportunities made possible by other people’s bad decisions. If history proves anything, recent recessions have averaged eight months in duration. If you believe the 4th quarter business media oracles, then that means we’re already a quarter of the way through. In fact, it will take at least six more months of a sustained downturn before anyone can officially call this time a “recession,” which means we could well be out of it by the time everyone agrees.

As Indiana manufacturing expert John Layden says: “The forecast is always wrong. Get over it.” Indiana beats recessionary rhetoric with productivity gains and real innovation. Instead of worrying, permit the economists to figure out the labeling. Let’s go compete.

Precise Communications and Advertising Claims

Earlier today I happened to pick some Safeguard soap for the home. The label boldly proclaimed: "Eliminates 99% of bacteria." Not "kills." Not "washes off." "Eliminates."

Does that mean that the 1% of bacteria that can somehow survive the Safeguard antiseptic cocktail is so potent that it might go after you?

Makes you wonder.

Perhaps a little more precise communication might be in order.

Whither the snow in Pasadena?

About this time every year (late January - early February) I go through a lengthy and useless rumination about the wisdom of leaving Southern California to return to Indiana, which I did in 1993. After all, the original name of Pasadena (where I lived for nearly 20 years) was the "Indiana Colony," as it was founded by frozen-out Hoosiers shortly after the Civil War. (By the way, Pasadena came within a few civic votes of being named "Hoosier." Can you imagine New Year's Day media hosts enthusing: "Now, live from Hoosier, it's the 110th running of the Hoosier Tournament of Roses!") Faced with a wind chill in negative digits earlier this week, I drifted wistfully back to when I was on the faculty at Pepperdine University, conducting marketing classes in January outside in full view of the Pacific Ocean.

I did take some solace when I learned that it SNOWED in Amman, Jordan earlier today. In fact, it dusted snow in Baghdad on January 11, the first time "in living memory" as one MSNBC writer put it. Apparently a highly unusual cold snap has engulfed much of the Middle East, wreaking frigid havoc as frozen drafts swirl through open buildings designed to dissipate withering heat.

Snowballs among the mosques somehow makes me feel better, but I don't know why.

Oh well, 45 days until the tulip season!

Ethics and a future economy

A science fiction fan since grade school, I find it fascinating to experience different views of the never-ending conflict between age-old human dynamics (which rarely seem to improve for any lasting length of time) and technology advances (ala Clarke's incredible RAMA series). Last summer I stumbled on to "The Ethos Effect" by L.E. Modesitt Jr. Apart from a tad too many detailed descriptions of what intergalactic pilots apparently order for dinner, I couldn't put it down.

Modesitt weaves together religion, racism, strategic management/planning issues, psychology and surprisingly, outright macro-economics. The hero of the fiction work, a black interstellar pilot named Van Albert, confronts numerous ethical dilmenas that would stop a cosmic clock. Finally faced with meancing empires -- one driven by corrupted faith , the other by secular greed -- he unexpectedly finds that he possesses the horsepower to deal with both and superimose his will upon others. But is it ethical?

Not to give away any more of the story, Modesitt's short ventures into simple micro-and macro-economics (linked by psychology) resonated pretty strongly with yours truly. A sample, where Van's mentor outlines a few things:

"Human beings are still genetically programmed or patterned to look at life in economic terms. Everything we do has economic overtones, and yet most people still want to deny that. I'm oversimplying enormously, but there are essentially two economic outlooks, again dating from our ancient roots.

"One is the 'big kill' view, and the other is the 'gatherer' view. The big kill literally comes from that kind of hunting outlook. You kill the biggest game animals possible, and then you use everything from that kill for as long as you can...[the other view is] gatherers, and later farmers, gleaning bit by bit, planning. Of course, in some cultures, farmers again went after the big kill in terms of a massive harvest of a single profitable crop -- monoculture in the extreme.

"What does this have to do with us?

"The big kill philosophy doesn't work over time. It doesn't work socially or economically. Steady managed returns work far better, and economic organizations that can develop that kind of approach actually produce higher profits and better products over time. They also instill more personal discipline.

"But they almost never produce huge windfalls, and there's always someone out there who tries to convince people that the big kill is better."

In a Donald Trump and American Idol media world, perhaps some food for thought?

Fortuna favet fortibus.

Launching a Gregorian Year

According to the Western calendar, today marks a new year. With a nod toward Chinese, Hindu, Hebrew and other means of keeping track of the days and months, best wishes for great achievements over the next 12 months!

(Photo of our frigid and snowy backyard earlier today in Indianapolis)