What the ???

The only way out of a recession or depression is to spend money. Recent articles concerning the housing market and cable companies show that some business areas or individual companies are choosing to ignore their customers, anger their client base, and/or make it as hard as possible for their clients to pay them money.

The housing article is particularly upsetting. The housing market drives much of the country's economy, so finding out first that the market is foreclosing on people who are paying their mortgages and are not in arrears is troubling enough (many articles, not citing a particular one here), but then to find that it is also not giving loans to those who are qualified and overqualified to get loans makes this insanely stupid. "We're in one of the most dire straights since the 30s and 40s. You're paying your mortgage, so we're kicking you out and trying to resell your home. And you want to buy that home we illegally repossessed, you can afford to pay the mortgage (just like the person we kicked out of it), but we're not going to give you loan. We're going to sit back and not let our clients pay us in any way. That'll fix things." Oh, and then the Senate quietly passes a bill that makes it harder for those who have been illegally kicked out of their homes to fight back. The bill only stopped when it reached President Obama's desk and he refused to sign it into law and asked for a probe into what was going on with the foreclosures. Thank goodness someone was using their head.

I don't think people are as up in arms over the cable industry issue, simply because we all know (not think or guess, but actually know) that cable companies are gouging us. What they don't seem to realize is that we all have so many other options by which to get the same content these days. While cable companies (and satellite vendors) provide us with possibly the easiest packaging and simplest connection to that content, we can now get it through legal and illegal means readily from a whole host of other means. We don't need them any more. And don't get the public started on battles between multi-millionaires/billionaires, whether they are corporations or people (I'm looking at you, NFL and NBA labor disputes). We don't sit with that any more. There are too many entertainment options out there now to be loyal to any one channel, cable company, sport, or venue.

Maybe, just maybe, actions like this will drive the cable companies and satellite providers toward giving the public what they want: per-channel pricing and per-channel packages. The technology has been available at least since the 80s for them to do this, yet here it is 30 years later and they still refuse. Yet, if they give the people what they want, rather than forcing packages containing dozens of channels the people don't want to watch, they actually become a better and more attractive option to the public. Imagine how many more customers they would have if a person could sign up for the 10 channels they want for $1 per channel/per month, instead of not buying anything because they can't afford the minimum $35/month for the channel package the cable company wants to give them.

So, here we have two examples of companies that are losing money, bleeding customers/clients, wounded and weak, that are going out of their way to anger and turn away even more customers. Doesn't seem like a smart business strategy for weathering the current economic crisis and being viable long-term, does it?