I’ve decided to offer up my online marketing knowledge as a consultant focusing on metro Detroit area businesses who are seeking to improve the performance of their websites. The web site for this business is WebByFred.com.

I focus on Search Engine Marketing, the idea of promoting your website to the search engines, rather than the general marketplace. This is perfect for local, land-based businesses. For most small businesses their website’s purpose is to bring people into one or more retail locations.

Web By Fred for all your Search Engine Marketing.

Ok, i was hoping not to make this a politcial platform for my views, since it’s not really helpful in business. I am much more liberal than most business men in the US. I believe in civil liberties, but i also believe in the free market. i believe that the only way a country can make socialism work is to run it as a business rather than burdening business. I tend to vote Democrat, i tend to laugh at Republicans as they rail on the socialists running the Democratic congress, etc.

Well this last week Congress, in a fairly bipartisan way, passed a law to set a tax rate of 90% on certain bonuses at companies receiving $5 billion or more in government aid. While i think this is counter productive and about 50% higher than any income earner should ever face, it’s totally legal and morally acceptable. What isn’t legal or morally correct is setting this tax retroactively to “get” the AIG bonus earners. This lynch mob mentality violates Article 1, Section 9 of the US constitution, which defines and empowers congress. It says:

No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.

People need to speak out against this abuse of power and violation of the constitution by the congress. The President should veto this law based on its unconstitutional nature.

Does Congress really believe we are a nation of laws or are we some sort of facist country where those in power rewrite the rules to enforce their political beliefs ahead of enforcing the nations laws.

Wow, it was weird to see Stuart Margolin playing a bit part on tonight’s saturday night live. Tracey Morgan’s monologue finishes up thanking Loren Michaels for making his career and calls him up on stage. Insteat, Margolin, playing a director walks about wearing a headset and tells tracey that he’s not Michaels, then walks off.

I’m not sure what’s up with Margolin, it looks like he worked a few times in 2006 and twice in 2008, so i guess his career has slowed down. it’s too bad, for someone who’s won 2 emmys for his work on the Rockford Files.

The company Christmas Party, despite cutbacks this year, is still a widely shared cultural experience in the US, many people have Christmas Parties either at the office or at offsite location sponsored by the company. Many people refuse to attend, many look forward to the party all year long and some attend purely as a political display. As a small business, with a partner and a couple of employees, 3 different states, we don’t really gather for social occasions, we’re already friends or relatives and socialize outside of business.

I for one am happy to trade the Christmas party for working on my own schedule and agenda, but i understand those how like a job and being part of a bigger team.

I found this “christmas” party image, it’s pretty funny:

Toyota announce that they now expect a loss of over $1 billion for their current fiscal year. I’ve yet to hear calls from Richard Shelby that they fire their executives, bust their union or consider reorganization. Of course Toyota isn’t seeking a bailout since they’re sitting on $29 billion in cash, about 3 times the value of the “Big 3″.

My point: If you don’t think the current credit crisis and it’s fallout hasn’t created an extrordinary situation you need to sober up and great real.

Unfortunately i feel it necessary to correct the talking heads on US news shows, who continue to spread their misinformed opinions about the Detroit automakers. These include Mark Haines of CNBC, George Will and Aryana Huffington. The fact that these people continues to demand new executives for the Big 3, arguing that you need outsiders to fix the problem.

Well the outsiders are there at 2 of the 3 companies. The people who own and run Chrysler are vulture capital group Cerberus Capital, they’ve put Bob Nardelli, formerly of GE and Home Depot in charge. Whether you like Nardelli or not, he’s not a car guy nor is he from Detroit. Ford Motor Company CEO Alan Mulally, was brought to Detroit from Seattle, where he ran manufacturing for the largest exporter in the US, Boeing Aerospace. Mulally has been tasked with restructing the company, which generally means cutting manufacturing and operational costs. He’s solely responsible for reversing Ford’s biggest marketing mistake since the Edsel, the retiring of the Taurus brand name. So 2 of the 3 companies are led by outsiders, non-auto, non-detroit guys, yet we should fire them?

You may ask if 2 men can make a difference? Maybe, but there are more new hires that make a difference. Here is a list:

Chrysler -
Jim Press - President, vice chairman. Former COO of Toyota NA, a 37 year Toyota Veteran.
Sigmund Huber Supplier Relations, former General Manager Toyota Engineering and Manufacturing in North America.

Ford -
JC Mays - Divisional VP, former Audi Designer, vp at SHR perpetual management
James D. Farley - Group Vice President, Marketing and Communications. Was Group Vice President and General Manager of Lexus, before leading Lexus, group vice president of Toyota Division marketing.

GM -
Well this is not a company that has brought in outsiders to held turn the tide, they are the exception of the 3. The old guard at GM did put the guys in place who had succeeded in Europe and the ROW. Europe was one of the GM’s more successful and most competitive markets.

So why don’t the media and the US Congress seem to know this?

North America’s Auto Capital - Yes I’m writing you from the Windsor side of the Detroit/Windsor border, the auto capital’s of the US and Canada. So you know i have a vested interest in this. This doesn’t make me an expert on the auto industry, but it does apparently mean i know a lot more about the topic than Senator Richard Shelby and NY Times commentator Tom Friedman. After listening to the two of them slander the US auto industry generally and the UAW specifically, I wanted to set the facts straight and let you decide.

The UAW is not the problem here. Toyota, Honda, Mercedes, BMW, Hyundai, Renault, VW, etc. all have Unions in their home countries. The problem here is the US Auto Company’s management. Detroit’s managers have had to manage their unions, as have their competitors, if the union is the problem, then management has failed to manage that part of their business. In fact, since 2005 the UAW has agreed to 2 major concessions in their contract. The first concession established a 2 tier wage system that allows the Detroit 3 to pay new workers at levels matching foreign owned plants in the US, while the second removed medical pension liability from the auto companies to the Union. The effect of these will be to reduce GM’s cost differential with Toyota by 80%, by 2010.

Now that the blame is being placed at management’s feet, just how bad are they? The Detroit 3 still holds about 45% of the US market, while competing against world class competitors that include Toyota, Honda, Daimler Benz, BMW plus companies including VW, Fiat and Renault who are world class in the small car markets. The Detroit 3’s 45% share is larger than that of Toyota, Honda and all 3 German automakers combined. How is this a failure? Does either Coca Cola or Pepsi have a 45% market? The Detroit 3 control 45% of the market against at least 15 large international competitors.

Friedman and Shelby chastised the automakers for not building what people want. Forgive my ignorance here, but weren’t pickup trucks and SUV’s the most popular vehicles in the US, before Oil skyrocketed and gasoline rose from $2 to $5.25? If Friedman or Shelby were right, the current financial panic should not have affected the sales of world beater Toyota? Well Toyota’s sales were down 26% while the US 3 were down 33-45%, the difference is based on the US companies being more focused on trucks and SUVs. So Toyota is down 26% and Ford is down 33% so Toyota is great and Ford is sub par? Let’s get real, whatever the problems the US 3 have, the financial panic which has wiped out sales, has had the effect of accelerating the costs of the US 3’s huge restructuring.

Finally, there is the repeated claim that Detroit is behind the times on technology, which is historically untrue. The Detroit 3 first introduced engine computers, overhead cams, fuel injection, etc. For years Detroit has led the way in spread safety technologies such as Airbags and ABS to mass produced cars. Yes Detroit has fallen behind on hybrids, but it’s important to remember that much of the success of hybrids have been their marketing as being greener than traditional cars. The reality, according to Toyota’s own numbers is that each Toyota hybrid reduces an average of 4.5 tons of CO2 over it’s lifetime (Hybrid Hype), about $5 worth of CO2 at current market prices: www.theccx.com. GM has been launching their Hybrids, which have focused on improving the mileage of their most popular and least efficient products: SUVs and trucks. Management in Detroit may have be unable to compete in small cars, pay themselves too much and lack forward thinking vision, but the truth is their products are demonstrating they still have a major impact in marketplace.

A lot of people have been shocked by a variety of aspects of the current credit/banking crisis and the recessionary conditions that it seems to have created or exhasterbated. I have been warning about the collapse of the US housing and mortgage markets and the potential for a banking collapse since i first heard, a few years back, that over 20% of all US mortgages were Interest only VAR loans. I never imagined that a) it would affect the rest of the world as much as it had and b) that financial firms in Europe were part of this AAA rated crapfest, or c) that people in Iceland, Hungary and other countries in Europe were taking out mortgages in foreign currency that could destroy them financially. I never imagined that Europeans would attempt or even be allowed to make such risky financial descisions, maybe more than in the US, but i was wrong.

Strangely enough, many things that have helped build the productivity of the last 25 years have combined to increase the speed at which economic changes occur and how extreme they are. In the 1970s it took weeks or even months for the automakers to notice that sales were dropping and to cut back production. Today the number are integrated so that if sales drop today, you can cancel a shift of production tomorrow. Ideas of maximizing your business by aggressively using your cash flow to expand your business, lead to businesses with no capital reserves. printers, car dealers, small manufacturers came to rely on credit to ensure they can pay their bills from day to day, so they could maximize their pay. That strategy and it’s associated tactics worked great in strong market. Today it appears that all markets are even more rapidly pulling back as the world sees slacking demand.

The combination of technology, management innovation and rapid communications have combined to allow the various players in the economy to react instantly. This rapid reaction has allowed the economy to turn around from boom to bust in a few short months as word of crisis cause business and consumers to start hoarding cash instead of spending it. We should get used to the speed at which the Economic “bi-polarism” occurs.

I was happy to have been contacted by Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold for my opinion about how the financial crisis was effecting the offset market.

his article was published today: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/05/AR2008100502518_2.html

While I am happy to quoted, unfortunately he didn’t mention my company 4Offsets.com or link to out site.

Here are my words wisdom

“People still come to the site, but where you used to get people signing up [for offsets] every day, now you’d be lucky to get a few people a week,” said Fred Weiss, a small-time offset seller based in Ann Arbor, Mich., who sends customers stickers that say, “Carbon Neutral Vehicle.” Apparently that isn’t as important now.

“Who cares about the environment? Am I going to have a house next week?” he imagined would-be customers saying.

Well maybe I’m on my way to fame and fortune, but I think it will take a bit more before i join the talking heads of the US media.

Can’t Get Enough of Me? ;>) BUY MY BOOK!

Well i hope someone will do something about slowing this crisis down. I heard/read yesterday that 30% of Prime rated borrowers are being turned down for car loans, vs 10% last year. The number for Sub Prime rated borrowers was a 90% rejection rate, vs just 30% last year, basically the sub prime market is gone. With all the automakers reporting sales down 35% and show room traffic down 45%, we can see these new financial realities hitting the society in many different ways and few if any are ‘good’.

I say let’s call these toxic securities(and i use the term securities loosely) as worth 35 cents on the dollar, for the purpose of “Mark to Market” accounting rule for a 6 to 12 month periods. This will bring borrowers into compliance with loan covenants thus slowing the crisis. In fact had this been the case last january, most of the crisis might not have happened.