Podcast 305

Comcast Customer Service Sucks. Close out the week with a podcast down in the bunker by the wood stove. A consumer advocate blogger breaks another national story about how bad Comcast’s customer service is. When a woman tried to cancel her cable service, the company allegedly refused to allow to her do so, and sent a late bill notice in which the customer’s name was changed from ‘Ricardo Brown’ to ‘A**hole Brown’. The story was picked up by CNNMoney and the rest of the mainstream media, and now Comcast has once again apologized. “It might take more than a few years for us to get our customer service straightened out” says a company spokesperson, or something like that. How are business models that seemed so great five, ten or twenty years ago looking more and more tarnished? What is the future of television, and cable delivered television. If Comcast is any example of how the industry operates, hopefully there is no future. Former Reagan OMB director David Stockman is on the warpath again, this time saying the Federal Reserve’s Quantitative Easing program is exclusively responsible for making people in the top 5 percent income bracket in the US richer. How is this era different from other ‘income inequality’ periods in US History. Does the Cocaine boom in Miami in the early 80’s prove, when business generates money (as opposed to central banks) everyone benefits? Meanwhile, the fastest growing business in the United States isn’t an industrial company or even technology, it’s legal Marijuana sales. Legal weed sales grew 74 percent in one year. Breaking news! The Obama Administration is telling banks to keep quiet about regulations targeted against gun owners and gun stores. More breaking news! More Americans are putting their cash in the mattress. Does that surprise you? And, the Minneapolis Tribune finds yet another negative story about North Dakota. Sponsored by Depotstar