I produced this video for Jon Loomer, a marketing expert who specializes in helping organizations leverage Facebook to drive their business goals.
The idea was to animate a fast-moving timeline that built up into a tower in a way that illustrates how rapidly Facebook is constantly evolving. I chose the music because I thought it reflected sort of a Tetris vibe.
Check out Jon Loomer’s Facebook page for more information about how he can help your business leverage Facebook.
Three years ago, a handful of banks facing eminent collapse took $850,000,000,000 from taxpayers, and promised to reform their ways.
One year after the meltdown, the executives who collectively ran the banking system into the ground rewarded themselves nearly $20,000,000,000 in taxpayer-funded bonus money.
Two years after the meltdown, the financial industry was spending more than $35,000,000 every month lobbying against any and all financial reform.
Three years after the meltdown, they lobbied House Republicans to bring our country to the brink of bankruptcy to block any attempt to raise taxes on people making more than $1,000,000,000 annually.
Today, these same financial vampires are vilifying our generation for being upset, and can’t understand why so many people hate them.
When you think about it, it is understandable why these bankers are confused. They’ve been getting away with so much corruption for so long that trying to tell them that the system has to be fixed now is like trying to convince an alcoholic that liquor stores should be outlawed.
To be completely fair, a lot of these investment bankers do not believe their free-for-all “investment” tactics are corrupt in the first place. A lot of them believe that their industry would better serve the economy if the government just eliminated all the rules, and left them to their own devices. A lot of them don’t even believe that what they’re doing is gambling. They think they’re investing money into the economy to create jobs.
But when you take money that customers deposit into your bank, and you use it to bet five times what your worth that poor people will indefinitely be able to pay their mortgages forever – you’re not creating jobs; you’re gambling away people’s savings.
Beyond the corruption of all that nonsense – this industry took $850,000,000,000 from taxpayers because they were about to disintegrate from the earth, and then used that to reward themselves $20,000,000,000 in bonuses. Forget the fact that $20,000,000,000 could finance half of what the federal government spends on higher education, and let’s just focus on the concept of rewarding yourself a bonus when your bank breaks.
Anyone who worked for a bank that was bailed out and accepted a bonus that ended with the suffix “illion” would most definitely eat his own son. And people like that belong in prison.
Which brings us to the third tier of corruption: why were these banks allowed to use taxpayer money to reward themselves huge bonuses? Because people like (D) Senator Chris Dobbs were in charge of including that rule, but forgot to include it because AIG gave him $225,000 in campaign contributions after giving his wife $500,000 every year to serve on various AIG boards.
My parents are always confused about why the Occupy Wall Street movement is protesting Wall Street instead of the government. But the concept I think our generation understands more extensively than theirs is how much our government is controlled by Wall Street.
And I don’t mean to say that we’re smarter or anything condescending like that. It’s simply a testament to how much the Internet has revolutionized our ability to find out how governments all over the world really operate. The same realizations are happening across the Middle East, where the Internet has enabled rebels from our generation to bypass state-controlled media and understand how their governments really operate.
I don’t think the Occupy Wall Street movement will end as dramatically as the movements in Egypt, Lybia and soon-to-be Syria – primarily because our citizens aren’t nearly as oppressed. But I do see this movement as our generation’s anti-Vietnam War movement: when people realized on a massive scale how ridiculous it was to continue sending thousands of kids to die overseas for no strategic reason other than “fight the commies forever.”
I like the fact that our generation is occupying Wall Street instead of Washington, D.C., because it shows that we understand that Congress doesn’t write our laws – Wall Street lobbyists write our laws and deliver them to Congress where they come under a vote. The occupation of Wall Street represents the knowledge that we know Wall Street controls our government, and we want that corruption to end.
And that is the reason I support Occupy Wall Street.
The OWS movement will inevitably fade like every other political trend. But if it were to accomplish one demand, I would want Congress to pass a law that ensures “The Separation of Corporation and State” – so that giant companies will no longer be allowed to finance political campaigns, and install politicians that they can control. Because we can’t even begin to fight the corruption until we stop the corruption from writing our laws.
Google and Verizon on Monday revealed their new proposal for how Internet providers should manage their networks, and “net neutrality” advocates are not happy about it.
The policy establishes two sets of rules for two parallel Internets: broadband and mobile wireless.
The broadband Internet will play by the traditional net neutrality rules, which advocates a free-and-open Web that does not discriminate and does not require websites to pay for higher exposure to customers. In other words, an equal playing field: Youtube (in its early stages) had just as much of a chance of popping up at the top of searches as Real Player (the video streaming leader of its time). May the best website win.
Controversy arises over the new rules for wireless networks: no net neutrality; anything goes – including allowing providers to block websites, and charge customers for different tiers of the Internet. The proposal also leaves open the possibility of letting providers have this same control over content on all future innovations in the wireless industry.
Because wireless innovation is the future of the Web, net neutrality advocates fear Google may have just signed over control over the Internet’s future to the corporate providers that care more about driving their bottom lines than genuine innovation and social integration. The new Google-Verizon policy sets an historic precedent that all Internet providers can now look at and say, “Well if Google says it’s okay, then that’s how we’ll do it from now on.”
The only entities that stand in this policy’s way are Congress and the FCC. But the FCC’s power over the Internet was badly marginalized by a Supreme Court case that sided with Comcast last summer. And most of Congress doesn’t understand how the Internet even works (think Republican Senator Ted Stevens, who called the Internet “a series of tubes.”)
What others have to say
Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg’s joint op-ed in the Washington Post: The proposal we outlined Monday as a suggested policy framework for lawmakers translates these principles into a fully enforceable broadband Internet policy. In developing this framework, we were guided by two principles: our commitment to an open Internet, and the need for continued investment in broadband infrastructure, which is critical to U.S. global competitiveness.
FCC Commissioner Michael Copps: Some will claim this announcement moves the discussion forward. That’s one of its many problems. It is time to move a decision forward—a decision to reassert FCC authority over broadband telecommunications, to guarantee an open Internet now and forever, and to put the interests of consumers in front of the interests of giant corporations.
PC World: Let’s use an analogy. Assume that the FCC called a meeting to declare pizza the best food ever. Then Google and Verizon meet on the side and call a press conference to declare that pizza is, in fact, the best food ever. Awesome! We all agree. Right? Well, when you look at the details, Google and Verizon are declaring pizza the best food ever as long as it doesn’t have pepperoni and it is only eaten indoors while sitting on folding chairs. All other scenarios are still open to interpretation.
Mashable: The proposal’s points about “additional online services” could be another area of serious contention. In fact, many of the journalists on the conference call expressed concern about it. Verizon and Google have agreed that wireline broadband providers can offer “additional online services” that don’t operate within these rules as long as they are “distinguishable in scope and purpose from broadband Internet access service.”
Jeff Jarvis (former president of Advanced Internet): I am baffled by the Google-Verizon agreement on nonnet-nonneutrality. I’m mostly baffled by why Google would put its name to this. What does it gain? As I see it, the agreement makes two huge carve-outs to neutrality and regulation of the internet: mobile and anything new… Mobile is the internet. Mobile will very soon become a meaningless word when — well, if telcos allow it, that is — we are connected everywhere all the time. Then who cares where you are? Mobile? doesn’t matter. You’re just connected. In your car, in your office, in your bedroom, on the street. You’re connected. To what? To the internet, damnit.
Craig Aaron (Director of Free Press): We need the FCC — with the backing of Congress and President Obama — to step and do the hard work of governing. That means restoring the FCC’s authority to protect Internet users and safeguarding real Net Neutrality once and for all… Such a move might not be popular on Wall Street or even in certain corners of Silicon Valley, but it’s the kind of leadership the public needs right now.
BP finally capped the ruptured oil pipe from spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico – 85 days after a rig explosion sparked the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history.
Engineers will now monitor the well for 48 hours, in hopes that pressure does not blow a new leak.
BP Vice President Kent Wells downplayed his company’s accomplishment, warning that the problem has been only temporarily solved.
“I hope [Gulf residents] are encouraged there’s no oil going into the Gulf of Mexico. But we have to be careful. Depending on what the test shows us, we may need to open this well back up.”
If the cap holds, BP officials will start extracting oil from the pipe, and pump it on to containment ships at the ocean’s surface. If pressure tests indicate a new leak has formed, BP will need to remove the cap to avoid blowing an even larger leak.
BP engineers started building the 75-ton cap five days after the Deep Water Horizon Rig exploded, and finished it two days ago.
Government officials estimates that between 93.5 million and 184.3 million gallons of oil have spilled into the Gulf. They estimate that cleanup efforts could take years, if not decades to restore the Gulf of Mexico.
Europe this week dared to do what the United States refuses to consider: it voted overwhelmingly to limit the amount of bonus money EU banks can give its executives.
Congress has tried passing a similar cap, but two entities stand in its way: fears of socialism, and the truckloads of money Wall Street uses to bribe Congress.
The first fear is legitimate, but irrational. Giving the government the power to mandate how much Wall Street can pay its executives contradicts the concept of capitalism. But when an industry reaches a point where survival depends on taxpayer (bailout) money to survive, then that industry has already become a socialist system, and it must abide by socialist rules (you can’t have your cake and eat it to).
To be clear: Europe has not really capped bank bonuses; it has simply required bankers to make its executives earn that money. The way it works: European banks give out bonuses, but executives can only keep 30 percent at first. At the end of the year, if those banks performed well, their executives can be proportionally compensated based on how much money their individual banks earn.
In the United States, banks allocate bonuses at the beginning of the year, and executives receive those bonuses in February – providing zero accountability, and creating incentive to take illogical risks (betting $30 for every $1 you actually have) to create the illusion of short-term profit.
One Wall Street banker described it as a game of musical chairs: the goal was to collect as much bonus money as you could, and then try to end up at a different bank or in a different department before the music stopped. Anyone can borrow $1 billion, throw it on the roulette wheel, ask people to bet on where it will land, and then leave before the wheel stops.
Banks should instead wait and see where the roulette ball lands before handing out bonus checks. The system should work to compensate actual performance. One idea: the Federal Reserve suggested that banks start compensating executives based proportionately on how well their banks individually perform, by requiring banks to wait a year or two to see the long-term effects of CEO decisions before awarding bonuses. Similar to Europe’s new model: that would force CEO’s to think about the long-term ramifications of their decisions.
But we should not expect Wall Street to self-regulate. These CEO’s understand the game, and their goal is to take as much money from investors as they possibly can before the system collapses. That is why we absolutely need government to grow some balls and regulate this system – particularly now that their bonuses come from taxpayers.
You might argue that these banks should have the God-given capitalistic right to do whatever they want with the money we invest in them. But I’d argue that because they accepted society’s bailout money, they must now abide by society’s rules: socialism.
But even if we can convince every American to think this way, we still need to figure out how to stop Congress from selling out the country for lobbyists’ money – and that is the real reason we will never see genuine financial reform.
European banks who accepted bailout money can no longer shower their CEO’s with excessive, unwarranted bonus money.
European Parliament members Tuesday night voted overwhelmingly in favor of capping short-term bonuses, by a vote of 625 – 28. EU finance ministers are expected to finalize the rules next week, and they should go into effect starting Jan. 2011.
The new legislation caps CEO bonuses at 30 percent – requiring banks to hold the remaining 70 percent unless they perform well for the year. Bonuses deemed “particularly large” will be capped at 20 percent, leaving it up to European governments to decide what “particularly large” means.
The law passed as Europeans express outrage at bank executives who used government bailout money to pay themselves enormous bonuses – similar to how American CEO’s continue to use taxpayer money to pay themselves multi-million-dollar bonuses.
Congress has considered a similar cap on American CEO’s, but Republicans argue that any cap like this would usher in a new era of socialism; and Democrats are too scared and incompetent to stand up for what they believe in.
President Obama made it clear Tuesday night that the government would make BP pay for the massive Gulf oil cleanup, but another battle on Wall Streets could send BP into bankruptcy as early as next week.
Next Monday is the deadline for a scheduled $10 billion dividend BP has already promised its shareholders. Failure to pay it could result in a massive exodus, as shareholders sell off BP’s already tattered stock – which is now down 48 percent since the accident.
And if BP does agree to pay those dividends, outraged Americans will eat their own heads after the media sensationalizes it into: “BP pays out massive dividends to shareholders as Gulf residents suffer.”
The United States – already facing a massive debt, signs of a second upcoming recession, and the longest troop-deployment in U.S. history – now needs as much money as it can legally pump out of BP before the company inevitably flat lines. The Gulf’s restoration will be impossibly expensive, and experts now fear that the ever-growing oil plume will eradicate the North American food web – species by species.
President Obama now faces the challenge of keeping BP on life support long enough for the government to collect what it can; while simultaneously appeasing angry Americans who belligerently want to see BP burned to the ground for its negligence (and for lobbying regulators to turn a blind eye to its more than 670 safety violations, over the past three years).
President Obama called last night for BP to set aside “whatever resources are required” to set up a Gulf compensation fund.
“I will meet with the chairman of BP and inform him that he is to set aside whatever resources are required to compensate the workers and business owners who have been harmed as a result of his company’s recklessness,” Obama said. “And this fund will not be controlled by BP. In order to ensure that all legitimate claims are paid out in a fair and timely manner, the account must and will be administered by an independent, third party.”
The U.S. government cannot legally force BP to set up a restoration fund, but it can ban BP from operating in the U.S. and seize all of BP’s assets (gas stations and pumps) if BP does not comply.
Government scientists now estimate that 60,000 barrels of oil per day could be gushing from the underwater well.
A blanket of oil swamped the Louisiana wetlands like a thick layer of syrup on Wednesday, as a seemingly endless geyser of oil continues to pour into the Gulf of Mexico. The oil has invaded marshes near the Mississippi River’s mouth at Pass a Loutre, North Pass, and South Pass.
Satellite images show that the oil stream has entered the Loop Current, which could drag the blob across Florida’s coast. National Geographic reports that the Loop Current could carry the oil south to the Gulf Stream, which would inevitably drag the mess around Florida, and north across the East Coast.
BP announced on Sunday that – after three weeks – it had finally managed to contain one-fifth of the constant stream of oil. But no one knows for certain how much that actually amounts to, because BP and the U.S. Coast Guard will not allow independent scientists, researchers or journalists into the area to monitor the situation up close.
BP originally reported that 1,000 barrels of oil per day were filling the Gulf. Five days later, the federal government raised the official estimate to 210,000 barrels per day. After BP released footage last week of the actual leak, many scientists and oil experts have argued that the leak could be as much as 20 times that official estimate.
BP’s current plan has been to spray the ocean with record-breaking amounts of a toxic chemical called Corexit. The chemical make-up of Corexit is kept secret under competitive trade laws, but it has been linked to human disorders, such as respiratory, nervous system, liver, kidney and blood disorders after its use during the Exxon clean-up. Corexit is banned in England and other European countries.
Another variable to consider is the impact of hurricane season. Not only could tropical storms disrupt clean-up efforts; hurricane winds could carry oil to fresh water lakes and rivers, where it will destroy more of the U.S. ecosystem.
Computerized trading programs triggered a massive sell-off on Thursday, sending the stock market crashing down before it instantly rebounded, in less than an hour.
The Dow fell 1,000 points before recovering 700 points by the closing bell, ending the day down 347.80 points (3.2 percent) at 10,520.
SEC officials are now investigating whether a single trader caused the sudden crash, when he accidentally placed an order to sell $16 billion, instead of $16 million, worth of futures.
The mistype caused computer trading programs to initiate massive sell-offs across the market, sending the market on an unexpected downward spiral.
Investors have set up these computer programs to react instantly to sudden changes in the stock market. The programs use complex algorithms to react instantly to the market, and give traders the best possible price on trades.
But Thursday demonstrated how easily the system can malfunction, as computerized selling led to more computerized selling – intensifying the sudden fall.
The New York Stock Exchange reported that it experienced no problems on its end, and that the SEC would hold a conference call with various markets to discuss the incident.
Nasdaq canceled all trades that were executed between 2:40 p.m. and 3 p.m. that it considered “clearly erroneous.”
The Dow has fallen 631 points (5.7 percent) since Tuesday amid fears of Greece’s massive debt crisis (As well as the 200,000 gallons of oil spewing into the Gulf every day; flooding that has devastated Memphis; and Call of Duty’s programmers leaving Activision to start their own company, Respawn Entertainment.)
Below is an example of one of those automatic computer trading programs. They have long been criticized by market analysts and, in my opinion, they should be outlawed.
British Petroleum has prepared a plan to stop the massive flow of oil pouring from the seafloor into the Gulf of Mexico.
The plan is to lower heavy, concrete-and-metal boxes into the gulf to capture the oil flow and redirect it to a barge at the surface.
The method has worked in the past, but only in shallow waters. It has never been tried at 5,000 feet below sea level.
“It’s probably easier to fly in space than do some of this,” Charlie Holt, BP’s drilling and completion operations manager in the Gulf of Mexico, said Sunday.
BP projects that the best case scenario for the plan would take at least one week to stop the oil flow. But if that doesn’t work, Plan B would take months to execute.
U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Sunday that the second option would be to drill a second hole into the ocean floor, and divert the oil to another area to be extracted. But that plan would take about three months to implement.
“You’re looking at potentially 90 days before you ultimately get to what is the ultimate solution,” Slazar said Sunday, alluding to the plan.
In the meantime, 200,000 gallons of oil will continue to pour into the Gulf of Mexico every day until someone figures out how to shut it off.
The oil slick grew over the weekend from the size of Rhoad Island to larger than the state of Delaware, and it is now visible from space.
Al Jazeera posted a great visual breakdown of how the disaster happened.
NASA captured these satellite images last Friday.
Andy Greenhaw specializes in multimedia journalism, social media marketing and motion graphic video production. He's proficient in Adobe After Effects, Premiere, Final Cut Express, PhotoShop, Illustrator, Soundbooth, Camtasia, Web design and copy writing for SEO.
I can produce almost every form of content on a highly professional level, and I know how to viralize it through social media.
