By Colleen Rothe

This is part four of a four-part series.

So you’ve gotten your attitude in line; you’ve gotten your body aligned; you’ve searched where no one else has searched and your paper pitch got a base hit to the interview. Now, it’s time to bring the job search home.

At this moment you are more than halfway through the game. Even if your opponents have stats that look good on paper, the interview is about spirit. It’s about who you are and what you can bring to the position.

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By Colleen Rothe

This is part three of a four-part series…

There are few jobs anymore that don’t require a cover letter and resume. These aren’t just banal words. These are important pieces of paper. These papers are your why-should-you-hire-me pitch. So make sure they do their job, so you can get one.

So do your research. Each cover letter and resume must be adapted for the job you’re applying for. Know what problems the employer wants solved with the position they have available. Show potential solutions within your cover letter, and experience to back it up in your resume.

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By Gene Ayres, Your Consumer Curmudgeon

Two weeks ago I posted a curmudgeonly dispatch about the generous treatment Wells Fargo Bank was offering its customers seeking to refinance under the so-called Harp Loan program. President Obama had just announced the program, as a government addendum to the bank bailout, in an effort to assist homeowners facing difficulties maintaining home mortgages, but who were actually making their payments. Officially, it's called the Making Home Affordable Plan (www.makinghomeaffordable.com), but Wells Fargo at least, has taken to calling it the HARP loan program. A name that I rather like, as it evokes Heavenly intervention, which let's face it, we all need right about now.

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By Colleen Rothe

This is part two of a four-part series on job-hunting…

Previously, I told you that only 10 percent of jobs are even advertised, and only a fraction of them are posted online, although that number is growing and it is the easiest place to find advertised jobs.

I’m not saying to forget looking there, but it’s not the only way to find out who is hiring and who needs a new problem-solver to work for them.

But when you have more than 90 percent of the ranks of unemployed trying for only 10 percent of the jobs, it makes competition hard. So move yourself into the universe that others are not exploring and get the odds in your favor.

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By Colleen Rothe

This is part one of a four-part series…

It’s hard to even worry about being a smart consumer or a consumer at all if you’ve been hit by a job loss. So the next series of posts will be all about job-hunting, securing a position and getting on the road to recovery.

If you’re not about taking the plunge to go into business for yourself after you’ve gotten that dreaded pink-slip, then you’ll have to press the interview suit, polish up the resume and create a strategy to find a new employer.

Finding a job that can support you, and possibly a family, is not easy in this New Depression. But there are a few things you need to know – debunking the myths of job-hunting that have existed for too long.

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By Gene Ayres, Your Consumer Curmudgeon

As most of you know, there’s been growing controversy over the dangers inherent in plastic containers, particularly polycarbonate plastics–the ones used in water bottles, plastic food-storage containers, the linings of some food and drink cans, and baby bottles. The outcry over baby bottles especially, has picked up in volume, because people tend to get touchy about their babies when it comes to stuff like, say, poison (hence the Chinese milk scandal). It seems that polycarbonates contain a chemical called bisphenol-A (BPA), which apparently mimics estrogen, and has been found to be wreaking havoc to the endocrine and reproductive systems in laboratory animals, which suggests (but, I hasten to add, doesn’t yet prove) that this stuff might, just might, not be too good for you, either. The official government position remains the same as before: while BPA can definitely leach into food and drinks, whether it actually affects human health currently is not yet known.

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By Barry Maher
www.barrymaher.com

We all know that tales of poor customer service spread faster and farther than reports of great service. But I have to admit my surprise when a relatively minor horror story that happened to me ended up on NBC Nightly News, the front page of USA Today and in newspapers ranging from The Cincinnati Enquirer to The Peninsula in country of Qatar.

To avoid having to go through the hassle of getting copyright clearance to record an incident from my own life, here’s a paraphrase of the way the story appeared in The London Times:

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By Gene Ayres, Your Consumer Curmudgeon

NEWS UPDATE: last week I wrote about how the Texas legislature was rallying to the support of its ethically challenged building association to prevent buyers of shoddily built homes (practically an oxymoron, these days) from suing their builders. Bad news: not to be outdone, Washington State is hurrying to do the same. Just this week, a legislator who spends just a little too much time in bed with the state homebuilders, it seems, has played a trump card to kill legislation that would have protected Washington home buyers from the same kind of shenanigans prevalent in Texas, and also, apparently, in Washington. So buyer beware is truer than ever here, and now.

But this week, I want to talk about home mortgages because, unless you happen to be a state legislator or congressperson, you probably need one to buy a home these days. Two items were in the news today that both hit home, literally. The first was the news that, while most banks were still struggling (mostly to safely hide their bonus money, no doubt) one was doing just fine: Wells Fargo, which had just announced a $4 billion profit in the first quarter of this year.

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By Gene Ayres, Your Consumer Curmudgeon

Not surprisingly, the National Board of Realtors and their local cronies, in combination with the various local homebuilders associations (e.g. the one in Washington State that was caught in bed with Dino Rossi for illegal campaign contributions), have been telling us all along that buying a home, preferably one of theirs, was always a great investment, values could only rise forever, and they were and still are all great products.

It's as if the bubble never happened, as if a thousand lawsuits nationwide against corrupt realtors, lenders, and builders don't exist. I saw an ad this week for a condo development in Seattle. A hundred carbon copy cardboard cutout units built to the latest non-existent, unenforced, nonenforceable non-standards, no doubt with wallboard from China made of compressed toxic waste (this is really happening, and has just been “exposed,” literally, in Florida, where all such things seem to happen first), the cheapest possible wiring, plumbing, framing, flooring, roofing, and windows. Lucky us. And guess what? Not one of them has sold. So they are now offering six months of payments, no doubt to their preferred lender, should you lose your job. These people don't get it. Nobody's buying for two reasons: a) they've already lost their job, and/or b) these bozos still think they can sell these cardboard boxes for $400,000.

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By A. Simpleton

Get ready to have a heart attack PETA. A new fashion trend has made its way to Seattle. What began as a means of survival, has become all the rage.

It started in Iceland in May of 2005.

Adalsteinn Bjartur, owner of a small whaling vessel, the Unnur, that ports in Reykjavik, was returning from the Greenland Sea with a net haul of 3 Orcas when the ship hit rough seas. A massive storm had blown in from the East and the normally tranquil Greenland Sea was now being swirled up by 150 mph winds.

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