International Law

MLM Same As Any Other Sales Organization?

Posted on October 17, 2008
Image via WikipediaAllisa makes a brave claim about MLM compensation on her website:"Many companies have devised a variety of MLM compensation plans over the decades. They feature two types of distributors - - managers and non - managers - - and three types of pay: Baseshop overrides are overrides( commissions) paid to managers by their subordinate non - managers, collectively called a baseshop...

Three Sentenced in Telemarketing Scam

Posted on October 17, 2008
Image via WikipediaHmm, must be Arizona's week for telemarketing scams.  As reported in Ktar, "Three men have been sentenced to prison for a telemarketing scheme that sold worthless vacation packages and fraudulent online sales businesses to senior citizens...

Stealing the FTC Name

Posted on October 16, 2008
Image via WikipediaFrom the FTC Press Release on a Lottery Fraud:In their latest effort to defraud the public, con artists claiming to work for the Federal Trade Commission are calling consumers and claiming that they have won a lottery or sweepstakes...

Tupperware Problems

Posted on October 16, 2008
Image via WikipediaFrom a story at Pink Truth,  I learned about this story regarding Tupperware. Tupperware used to be a franchise in the US, but several years ago rebranded as MLM company. Here is the Tupperware story, from the Times Union. The most famous brand is still Tupperware, the plastic kitchenware, storage containers and other household goods...

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Do Due Diligence Before Buying a Franchise

Posted on October 16, 2008
Image via WikipediaI am going to whack this advice about how to perform pre-purchase due diligence when buying a franchise."Through due diligence, a prospective buyer of a franchise gathers detailed information about the business potential and profitability, financing requirements, operational risks and other factors that must be discovered and analyzed before proceeding with the deal...

Email claiming to be from AdWords?

Posted on October 16, 2008
Image by rustybrick via FlickrSome good and timely advice from Google Adwords about a phishing scam.There are reports of phishing emails that falsely appear to be from adwords-noreply@google.com. These fraudulent emails ask users to update their billing information, take action on a disapproved ad, edit their account, or accept new AdWords terms and conditions...

The Logic of Provability

Posted on October 15, 2008
Image via WikipediaHoward Raiffa, one of the academic deans of analytic thought about negotiation theory and practice, is fond of saying "When I hear the options are A or B, I think why not both?" (Ironically, the two solution to the two person bargaining game which incorporates this thought, the Kalai solution is different than Raiffa's solution to the two person bargaining game...

Evil Roy Slade and Banks

Posted on October 15, 2008
Image via WikipediaOne of the best western movies is Evil Roy Slade which also had a philosophical view about accounting that is relevant to the US bailout of their banking system.Evil Roy Slade is leader of bank robbing gang - and Evil Roy needs to break up the gang...

What "Due Diligence" Means

Posted on October 15, 2008
Image by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com via FlickrPurchasers of franchises and investments are often told to perform pre-purchase "due diligence". "Due diligence" is essentially a defence avail to the sellers of securities to the public for making materially misleading representations to the public, that is the due diligence defence allows the sellers to avoid liability for lying...

Phone call of the Day

Posted on October 15, 2008
Image via WikipediaA great series of thoughts about how to defeat telemarketing fraud, started by Tyler Cowen who noted:"For the past three years, [Bhumika] Chaturvedi has been a top collection agent at her call center, phoning hundreds of Americans a day and politely asking them to pay up...

Jumping to conclusions!

Posted on October 14, 2008
Image via WikipediaDiane Levin has a neat post about logical reasoning - and no I won't tell yo my score, although if you know that I favour using a logic, called intuitionistic  logic, which does not have (p or not p) as axiom, you can guess my score fairly accurately...

Shiller's Subprime Solution(s)

Posted on October 14, 2008
Image via WikipediaThe intellectual value in studying business opportunity fraud is that if we are able to understand these exercises in simple frauds, we might be able to short circuit errors of judgments in investments - in which the underlying purchase is not inherently fraudulent...

Thinking about buying a franchise?

Posted on October 14, 2008
Image by wallyg via FlickrMarkus May, writing at The Naperville Sun, has some nice insights about purchasing a franchise.Often we see people who are interested in establishing their own business in order to avoid working for other people. Often a downsized executive is no longer interested in working for someone else and wants to buy a company to provide for the family...

Regulators close YTB Bank

Posted on October 14, 2008
Image via WikipediaInteresting story about YTB's primary lender, the Meridian Bank. "Meridian Bank, a primary lender to Wood River travel firm YTB International, was closed today by the Illinois Department of Financial Professional Regulation-Division of Banking...

What is Business Risk?

Posted on October 13, 2008
Nassim Taleb has a nice rant about the traditional model of risk: the future will turn out to be much like the past, and risk is a measure which calculates how that path will vary. Taleb objects, I think correctly, to a view of business risk which is built upon the 17th century gaming model...

Congratulations to Paul Krugman

Posted on October 13, 2008
Image by Getty Images via DaylifePaul Krugman has won the Nobel Prize in Economics There will be plenty of stories around the blogosphere explaining Krugman's economic accomplishments. However, I am very interested in what Krugman describes as his modeling strategy...

Why Were Warnings Ignored?

Posted on October 13, 2008
Image via WikipediaRichard Posner has both an interesting question and outline of an answer to why the financial crisis was a surprise."Why was the crisis not foreseen? An article on the front page of the business section of yesterday's New York Times attributes that blindness to "insanity," more precisely to a psychological inability to give proper weight to past events, so that if there is prosperity currently it is assumed that it will last forever...

Franchise Law Conference

Posted on October 13, 2008
Image via WikipediaThe 8th Annual Franchise Law Conference will be of significant interest to both business and litigation lawyers. Given its emphasis on the practical application of legal principles, the program will be informative for business and litigation lawyers involved in franchise, distribution and licensing law, whether in private practice or in-house...

Should Franchisors be Worried about Anti-Trust?

Posted on October 10, 2008
Image via WikipediaFranchise systems live in a odd paradox. On one hand, they seek to spread and proselytize their brand to their customers to restrict their choice. Yet, they also seek to avoid any of the legal ramifications of restraint of trade, or anti-trust doctrines...

eBay Rulings Relating to Counterfeiting

Posted on October 10, 2008
Image via WikipediaRoger Parloff has put on his website the English translations of the important eBay decisions from Europe."Since a number of people have emailed me seeking English translations of the various international rulings relating to whether eBay (or other online auction houses, of course) can be held liable when visitors sell counterfeit goods on its site, I thought I'd collect and post all the translations I have in one location...

Why Direct Sales is Hard

Posted on October 10, 2008
Image by Getty Images via DaylifeKim Klaver has some sensible things to say about direct sales and why network marketing is hard. Three reasons: 1. Most folks coming into the business have never had a business of their own before, or done any commission sales...

Tom Schelling on Fear and Loathing

Posted on October 10, 2008
Image via WikipediaWhen Tom Schelling talks, it is worth listening to.  Here he is talking about the dynamics of fear and panic."Investors Jim Rogers, Mark Mobius and Laszlo Birinyi and Nobel Laureate Thomas Schelling talk about the dynamics of fear and panic in the global stock market rout...

Invisible Hand and Usury

Posted on October 09, 2008
Image via WikipediaRob Kirby has timely and useful reminder about what is wrong with usuryProfits from usury do not arise from any substantial labor or work but from mere avarice, greed, trickery and manipulation. In addition, usury creates a divide between people due to obsession for monetary gain...

Cheating Charities

Posted on October 09, 2008
Image by Getty Images via DaylifeOne of the standard tricks of a con criminal is to trade on borrowed authority, real fake. The easiest authority to borrow is from a well respected charity. By sponsoring a charity event, or having some perceived connection to a charity, the con criminal absorbs the authority from the charity...

Experts Warn of Investment Scams

Posted on October 09, 2008
Image via WikipediaInteresting story about the free lunch ploy."It was a common ploy, financial experts say -- a smooth-talker in a suit, preying on seniors, holding "free lunch" seminars and promising fail-safe investment opportunities. And in these times of economic turmoil, when many may be worried about how they'll survive retirement, investors looking for a sure bet can find themselves at risk...

Thursday Fraud News

Posted on October 09, 2008
Image via WikipediaAlan White writing at Consumer Law and Policy argues that GSE were not responsible for the subprime crisis:"The fact is that subprime lending caused the crisis, and subprime loans were, by definition, loans that Fannie and Freddie (the GSEs) would NOT purchase...

FTC Fraud Forum

Posted on October 08, 2008
Image by sha in LA via FlickrFrom the FTC Press Release on FraudThe FTC will host a a fraud forum on Februrary 25 and 26th 2009, in Washington, DC. The Forum will examine how the FTC can more effectively protect consumers from fraudulent schemes. The first day of the Forum will be open to the public and will provide an opportunity for law enforcement, consumer advocates, business representatives and academics to examine, among other things:the extent of fraud in the economy and what survey research indicates about fraud victimization rates;the drivers - economic, sociological, and psychological - that create and sustain fraudulent actors; how new fraudulent actors learn the tools of the trade, and how they target victims;whether some segments of the population are at greater risk of being targeted by fraudulent actors; whether victim surveys adequately identify the magnitude and types of fraud launched against all segments of the population; what techniques law enforcement has employed to reach these segments of the population; andwhich best practices in private industries, such as banking, telecommunications, and online commerce, are best suited to identify fraud and prevent their services from being used by fraudulent actors; which systems adequately track potentially fraudulent activity and whether opportunities exist to use new or improved self-regulatory efforts to combat fraud...

List Brokers Help Telemarketers Defraud Consumers

Posted on October 08, 2008
Image via WikipediaOne of the important sources of information for the fraud criminals comes from list brokers. This industry is regulated in part by the FTC. The recent FTC judgment against a list broker is quite illustrative of the problem. "Under the terms of a settlement announced by the Federal Trade Commission today, a list broker, formerly based in Arizona, and the two companies he ran have agreed to a proposed court order barring them from violating the agency's Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR)...

Why Did Einhorn Attack Lehman?

Posted on October 08, 2008

Is effort a myth?

Posted on October 08, 2008
I am not much for self-help blogs, or the like.  The just-so stories don't appeal to my nature.  I suspect that this is a function the skeptical nature I cultivate.But Seth Godin wrote an intriguing piece on effort and luck."Here's a bootstrapper's/marketer's/entrepreneur's/fast-rising executive's effort diet...

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