Economics for One

American Express has begun demanding that some of their customers send in copies of their personal tax returns or face a cancellation of their account.  These US tax returns are then sent to India for review.

Customers who refused to send copies of their personal tax returns to American Express have had their accounts closed with prejudice.  They lose any reward points they may have accumulated, are required to immediately pay off the balance of any revolving credit, and have a negative report sent to the credit rating agencies, which results in a drop in their credit score.  If they fail to immediately pay off the revolving credit in full, they are sent to collections and face additional penalties.

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The 2000 film Boiler Room depicts the seedy world of the “pump-and-dump” scam.  In it, a broker purchases a large block of public stock in a shell (i.e. empty) company.  The firm then calls potential clients to pitch them the same stock.  This drives up (“pumps”) the price, making it appear to be a runaway stock, thus attracting more buyers and driving the price higher.

When the price is high enough, the broker “dumps” their own shares at a huge profit and walks away.  The result is that the buyers are left holding stock in a worthless, basically non-existent company, which promptly falls back to zero, wiping out the investors.

Which brings us to Silicon Valley.  Over the past decade or so, Silicon Valley has morphed from a region that was the builder of great companies (Apple, HP, Intuit, Cisco, Oracle, etc), into perhaps the greatest generator of “pump and dump” stocks.

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Sometimes the timing of recessions in your life matters.  If they occur at the end of your career, you should have enough cushion to ride things out.  If they are early enough, you can reduce your expenditures, move in with your parents or friends, and seek low-paying jobs to hold you over.

But what happens when you get hit with two recessions back-to-back when you are starting a family, just buying your first house, and just beginning to build a career?  You can only reduce expenses so much, especially with kids.  And you don’t have much cushion.

Here’s an interesting little bit about the effect of the current and past recession on Generation X (born 1961 – 1981).

www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29497408/