Denial, gambling-habit, media factors in financial crisis

Over the past 24 hours, the American people saw the largest bank collapse in U.S. history, worse than any experienced during the Great Depression. The failed bank, Washington Mutual, is the latest in a string of large financial entities that went belly-up. Americans are witnessing severe 'adjustments' in the markets with disbelief and incomprehension as to what really is going on. That is thanks to the dumbing-down efforts of the mainstream media, which is self-servingly (being stock-issuing corporations themselves) trying to steer peoples' emotions from panic to naive optimism.

But what are people to think when the largest companies in the world in the financial and insurance sectors have failed in such a short time?

The U.S. government is doing its best to assure bank depositors that their savings are safe yet few people hear the stories from the media of customers with more than $100,000 in IndyMac and other banks that have failed - those people saw their life savings disappear. Americans are now being told by many credible sources to not carry more than $100,000 in any bank account, but what will that do to balance sheets of bank institutions when large amounts of deposits are sucked out?


Last week, money-market mutual fund account holders nearly fell into the financial abyss when there was an unprecedented sell-off that was stemmed by a last-minute injection of billions of dollars of funds by the Federal Reserve and various Central Banks worldwide. The Fed announced that those money-market account holders now have a short-term FDIC-like insurance. Millions of Americans got lucky, yet long-term (permanent) money-market mutual fund insurance protection will be very costly to the economy.

Then comes the stockholders. Nowadays, most Americans are stockholders by virtue of having either an IRA, pension, 401k, mutual fund, etc... which carry 100% risk on its stockholdings from downturns in the stock market - there is no insurance for people who have their nest eggs tied up in stocks and mutual funds. Retirement accounts are insured only, by the FDIC, up to $250k, in case the bank that holds the IRA/401k fails; the inherent value of your retirement holdings is not protected from stock price fluctuations. If stocks plunge down to a DJIA level of 6,000, most people will lose about 50% of their life-savings.

What will, should people do?

Even though the 'rescue plan' being put together (or not) by U.S. politicians is ripe with pitfalls according to hundreds of leading economists, people are sticking with their stock-investments. Investors of all types simply won't cash out their portfolios in the same manner that gambling-addicts won't stop buying lottery tickets despite the fact that the odds of winning are poor. But are the odds really that bad? Americans, by and large, are still holding out hope, agreeing with the extremely optimistic view put forth by investment professionals on and off television and radio programs that you need to stay in it for the long haul because historically the markets have always trended upwards.

But what if the markets won't continue to perform the way they have done over the past 50 years and return profits and dividends to investors?

What if the signs of an economic Depression are staring us in the face, but everyone is in denial?

What if we are making the situation worse by denial, succumbing to distorted media information, and not dealing with our society-wide case of gambling addiction?

[Full chart, 'Reserve Bank Credit and Federal Reserve Holdings of U.S. Treasury Securities,' accessible at http://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/usfd/page16.pdf]

Google Product Search now on WordDial's 'Search' portal

It's no surprise that WordDial owns the dotcom wordnumbers for 'Product' (7763828.com) and 'Froogle' (3766453.com), but it has taken until this month for Google to ask WordDial to include listings for Google Product Search (formerly Froogle).

The link to 'Google Product Search' appears at actually NOT the page at 3766453.com (since Froogle is no longer being marketed), but rather at the portals for Product (7763828.com) and Search (732724.com). WordDial's domain 77638287.com (Products) conveniently redirects to 7763828.com (Product).

Links to Google and its various product offerings have appeared in WordDial's directory portals for a number of years. One of the most interesting domains that Google 'leased' from WordDial is 48273426.com (Guardian). That was part of a temporary marketing strategy whereby Google Inc. "wanted its brand name to be synonymous with the word 'Guardian,' and thus security." Through mid-2007, the three top slots at the 'Search' portal were different mobile URLs to get to Google Mobile - the 'Search' portal was vastly cleaned up in July 2007.

Google is one of the pioneers in the wordnumber concept and since forever (in Internet years) has owned several dotcom wordnumbers of its own brands including 466453.com (Google), and 46245.com (GMail).

$700 Billion in 'reverse economic stimulus checks'

Congress may approve the American President's proposal to allocate $700 BILLION to the biggest bailout of financial institutions since the Great Depression.

How much is $700 BILLION?

It's about equivalent to giving a $100,000 Hummer to each man, woman and child living in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Or giving a hundred pairs of $40 blue jeans to every college student in the United States!

Or equivalent to awarding $17.5 million to every taxi cab driver in New York City!

Or giving a $200 gas card to every person worldwide that has a mobile phone!

Or if every adult person in America was forced to make out 7 (SEVEN) $600 checks payable to the government. Call it a reverse-economic stimulus payment plan. Or 'get one $600 stimulus check, and give back seven $600 checks'.

Understanding the crisis:

Ron Paul: "If this process continues, we're going to own General Motors and Ford, then we will have to own the airlines. We are socializing our country without even a vote by the Congress. It's a horrible situation."

Adhip Chaudhuri, economic analyst, 'At the same time, let us be sure that the US government will be left with all the lemons while the private companies will keep all the peaches. No doubt this will bail out the private financial institutions, but how much will it cost the taxpayers?'

Danny Schechter, GlobalResearch.ca: 'Joe Nocera in the New York Times was less positive, likening these measures to a “hail mary pass” in football where a quarterback just flings the ball in the final minutes of the game and hopes someone catches it, noting that ”most of the time they fail.”'

NuDom Firm Launches, Goes Public, Wows the Sector

Scott Smith, who probably should be considered a veteran NuDom, recently launched his new company, Skias Management Corp. Smith is past founder of AcrNum, which partnered with a large media company to launch a successful mobile gaming portal for Sudoku fans that utilized one of Smith's prized numeric domains.

Unlike his first company, Smith's new firm, Skias, is publicly traded. Jamptap found it listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange at this link and trading for about 0.50 Euros/share. The stock was admitted to the bourse on August 21, 2008, with a 'First Price' of 0.55 Euros.

Congrats to Scott's IPO!

Numeric domain speculators would be FOOLs to not realize the incredible portfolio amassed by Smith and the opportunity to buy into a slice of his enterprise. Why? Because when people say 'all the good numeric domains are gone,' it's Smith who's smirking because he got in early on brand dotcom wordnumbers. Smith also has an unsurpassed grasp of this niche industry.

This is your chance to place your long-term 'bets' on Smith's ability to leverage his unparalleled portfolio to create a respected and profitable full-service mobile website development firm.