Roses are red, says the poem, and violets are blue, but in fact roses come in almost every shade of the rainbow, including blue.

If you search, you can find yellow roses, which originated in the Middle East, pink roses (the original damask roses), white roses (alba species), traditional red roses, and even blue roses, the first of which was created in Japan in 2004.  There are even black roses, sold under the names Ink Spot, Black Magic and Baccara, though in fact these “black” roses are really only a very deep shade of red.

By any name, and in any color, roses are the most beautiful flower in existence, as well as the most varied, thanks to generations of breeding and cultivation for perfect forms and unique colors. In fact, roses are so well loved that certain cities, notably Tyler, Texas and Portland, Oregon, dub themselves “The Rose Capital of America” and “The City of Roses”. Both cities boast phenomenal rose gardens, and Tyler’s unique claim to fame is that it grows and ships more than half the roses distributed to garden centers across America.

Whether you are looking for a single rose for your beloved, or a dozen roses in such unique shades as blue or black for a special occasion, you can’t go wrong calling 1-800-FLOWERS, a worldwide chain of florists which can supply any color, style or variety of rose you have in mind.

Many companies now tie their online reputation to business outcomes through online reputation tracking tools. For example, using social media tools like Google alerts and Technorati, public relations professionals can identify and ameliorate negative influences on corporate reputation and branding efforts.

While the idea of reputation is not new, applying it to corporate recognition and branding platforms is an idea that has emerged only in the last few decades, almost simultaneously with the rise of online information systems. Electronic intermediaries, or online reputation management systems, can effectively gather, analyze and distribute reputation-improving information to help your business achieve the sort of reputation that makes the product sell itself.

In the past decade, measuring, aggregating and molding public opinion has become an integral function of online PR firms, which can focus brand and influence public perception, as well as improve search engine rankings. No longer is it necessary to grin and bear it when negative publicity damages your corporate reputation. You can, with the ease of a mouse-click, reverse or offset the injurious remarks and prejudicial comments with positive feedback.

Reputation management, however, isn’t limited to brand and feedback, but also to an understanding of what, and how, a competitor is doing. “Keeping your enemies close”, as Lao Tzu recommended, is not only good war strategy but good business strategy, because your competitor’s successes (and failures) can help you target novel and unexpected ways to advance your own company’s reputation and sales figures.

As we enter the next Great Depression, various writers have begun to assign blame. One cites free trade, beloved of economists but the bane of American workers. Economists (using Joseph Schumpeter’s theory) view free trade as a leveler, removing unproductive jobs in backward industries and replacing them with better paying alternatives. Economists don’t work in customer service, manufacturing or IT, which have jointly lost 2.3 million jobs since 2001 (McKinsey Consulting). This trend is accelerating, and economist Alan Blinder estimates that eventually as many as 30 percent of jobs may be outsourced to India and other cheap-labor countries. Even economists are beginning to realize that the gains from free trade go to those at the top of the economic food chain, and the “trickle-down effect” (or Reaganomics) seldom reaches workers at the bottom. The upside of this gloomy economic picture is that companies are running lean. Unfortunately, this is also the downside; there is no place for the unemployed to go.

Market forces, and the balance of trade, determine the value of the dollar. I will cite from a 2003 report by the Peterson Institute: “Two complementary steps are needed to complete the essential correction of the dollar…First, the trade-weighted average exchange rate of the dollar needs to fall by another 10-15 percent to restore a sustainable external position for the United States. Second, this upcoming “second wave” of decline should occur against a broader group of currencies and with greater corresponding appreciations in East Asia (i.e., not against the Euro)”.

According to the Federal Reserve Bank, a strong dollar creates lower prices on foreign goods, but also makes it harder for U.S. firms to compete in foreign markets (or for foreigners to invest in U.S. firms). A weak dollar makes it easier for U.S. firms to sell abroad and invites foreign investing. Unfortunately, consumers face higher prices because foreign goods become more expensive. If the Peterson Institute protocol is achieved, economically stressed American consumers will be put further in the hole by greatly inflated energy and food prices, and the even more recently announced 12-percent inflation rate in China, which ups the cost of Chinese goods.

Between 2000 and 2007, the dollar lost 30 percent of its purchasing power. Some fringe economists have accused the Federal Reserve of operating the U.S. like a banana republic, running up huge overseas debt, selling capital assets to foreign interests and printing money by the truckload. One commentator calls the dollar a “Bernanke peso”, another accuses the U.S. of subscribing to “Zimbabwe economic theory”. China has about $120 billion in U.S. debt, and Latin American countries have begun selling off their dollar reserves after years of bolstering our economy.

The system of Federal Reserve Banks, or the Fed, is not a government agency. It is a fiscal management organization (some call it a cartel of bankers) mandated by Congress in 1914. At its inception, J. P. Morgan Co. and Kuhn, Loeb & Co., reportedly bought stock in the Fed on behalf of the Rothschild’s and the Bank of England, and had their principal officers appointed to the Fed in various advisory capacities. The trend has persisted. Goldman Sachs entered the Fed arena later (former Goldman employees currently head the New York Stock Exchange, the World Bank, the U.S. Treasury Department and Treasury in the person of Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr.). One observer credits Goldman (acting in concert with the Fed) with repeal of the Public Utility Holding Company Act (PUHCA) in 2005, saying Goldman’s current energy windfall profits are a result. Kevin Warsh, a current chairman of the Fed, was once director of mergers and acquisitions at J. P. Morgan (Greenspan worked there, too). Donald Kohn, vice-chairman, is also current chair of the Committee on the Global Financial System (GFS), an international money and banking system whose key players include the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS, of which ex-chairman Greenspan was also chair from 1994 to the end of his Fed term). The BIS is comprised of financial institutions acting in the global arena. Hedge funds are part of this global operation, and have recently experienced a trading surge, sparking rumors that the Fed is short-selling. Three of the five Fed members have served as Bush advisors. Conspiracy theories are bound to propagate when the rich and powerful also hold the purse strings of the American economy.

Federal Reserve banks are privately owned corporations (Lewis vs. US, case #80-5905, 9th Circuit, June 24, 1982). As such, they are not required by the Securities and Exchange Commission to publish a list of major shareholders. Federal Reserve notes are not backed by gold, but by the assets of the Federal Reserve, namely the power of Congress to tax people. Gold represents a meager one-tenth of Fed notes. The 1914 act effectively transferred the power to coin and issue money from the government to the Federal Reserve. No Federal Reserve Bank has ever been audited. The banks are reportedly owned by: the Rothschild Bank of London; the Warburg Bank of Hamburg; the Rothschild Bank of Berlin; Lehman Brothers of New York; Lazard Brothers of Paris; the Kuhn Loeb Bank of New York; the Israel Moses Seif Banks of Italy; Goldman, Sachs of New York; Warburg Bank of Amsterdam; and the Chase Manhattan Bank of New York. In 1992, taxpayers paid the Fed banking system $286 billion in interest on national debt created by Fed policies; debt which the Fed purchased by printing money. Forty percent of all income tax goes to pay this interest, but the actual debt that can never be repaid. In fact, the Fed is rather like a high-interest credit card, and America has been behind on its payments almost since inception.

The First Great Depression was also a series of events put in motion by the Federal Reserve. In 1925, according to Ron Chernow’s book, “The House of Morgan”, Ben Strong, then chairman of the Fed, made a secret commitment to the governor of the Bank of England to help England reinstate the Gold Standard. With moral support from the U.S. Treasury, Strong raised the value of the British pound by depressing U.S. interest rates. The economy, already strong, soared. With investment margins at 10 percent, investors began borrowing heavily to invest in the stock market.

Strong died in Oct. 1928. His successor, George.Harrison, raised rates to cool the fever, but too late. Almost one year later, on October 28, 1929 the Dow fell 20 percent. It continued to fall, bottoming out 40 percent below its peak in two months. The Fed dumped money into the system, creating temporary recovery, but the Dow finally hit bottom at 41.22 on July 8, 1932, 10 percent of its peak three years earlier. In what the Feds called their “austerity” program, banks were not given more money, and between 1930 and 1933 a cascade failure ensued. The money supply fell 27% from 1929 to 1933. In that same period, tax revenues also fell, leaving a 900-million gap in the budget. The Revenue Act of 1932 was expected to raise $1.1 billion in new revenue from steeper income tax rates and lower exemptions, and it did, on the backs of impoverished Americans.

As soon as banks start failing again, the Fed will further consolidate its position as the only game in town by stepping back and again demanding austerity. The Fed is, traditionally, a lender of last resort. This means that when a bank is in trouble and cannot meet its depositors’ demands for cash, the Federal Reserve must provide the liquidity by buying the loans (or bonds from the banks’ investment portfolio). The Federal Reserve was derelict in this responsibility during the banking crises that culminated in the Great Depression, and it will be derelict again, because consolidating power in the hands of the few is the real international monetary policy.

Ron Paul, the most vocal opponent of the Fed, says “The Fed has followed a consistent policy of flooding the economy with easy money, leading to a misallocation of resources and an artificial “boom” followed by a recession or depression when the Fed-created bubble bursts”.

We don’t need conspiracy theories (i.e., the Fed is short-selling the market, is involved with Enron and the Carlyle Group to bring America to its knees, bribed Democrats in S. Florida to stop a ballot count in the last election, etc.). We have the facts, and the Fed is a failure. Considering its international alliances, no one should be surprised. As Thomas Jefferson, founding father of our country, pointed out: “A merchant has no country.”

If you think the Fed can, or will, act in more than a marginal fashion to save the American economy, read: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/22/business/22norris.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2&dlbk&oref=slogin

 You can see it everywhere in our crippled society; a boss is rude to his assistant, a customer is rude to (i.e., abusive to) a waiter or a sales clerk, a husband is abusive to his wife, a mother abuses her children. Power exhibits the real trickle-down effect, with each successive layer of society snubbing, dismissing, or abusing the strata beneath it.

 These perceived strata also exist in the animal kingdom, but there they are used for the preservation of the species: the alpha female among wolves does not permit other females to breed because her genes are strongest; older, more experienced ducks lead the flock flying in V-formation, with the lead changing to another elder when the first tires. The queen bee is the only one with gender privileges, and she uses these to lay a million eggs to enhance the hive’s population, literally killing herself in the process.

 Only mankind has elevated power in all its manifestations to a status symbol, and in the last few decades (with leaders like Bush showing the way) power has become its own raison d’etre. The leader of our country does not lead because he is the best man for the job – that is, more intelligent, more experienced, more diplomatic, or even simply more able to subvert disaster. He leads because others, with even greater power, deem him to be the most easily manipulated. Consequently, his attitude toward all who would challenge his power is equally peremptory, and equally dismissive.

 Our society values nothing so much as power: not intelligence, nor creativity, nor compassion, not even nobility. Only power has the sweetness to sway the millions, but that sweetness has begun to taste, and smell, like decay. In the overweening pride of our political and religious leaders, our corporate moguls, our finagling financiers, our real estate barons (and in the increasing incidence of their peccadilloes and perversions) we see the end of empire.

 It is a natural end; bread that rises too high eventually collapses, an over-inflated tire will explode. All things that exceed their natural proportions are destined to end, whether it be rapacious corporate conglomerates or the gluttony of a single man. Excess leads to extinction.

 We have consumed, and been consumed by, the idol of power in all its manifestations. And we will be exterminated by its effects, as surely as ancient Rome, or Hitler’s regime.    

 We did the same to immigrants coming into America through Ellis Island. If the immigration agents couldn’t pronounce a name, they simply changed it. If the parents, the elders, couldn’t speak English, we sent their children to school so that they could act as translators.

 As a nation, we perfected homogeneity. We made everyone recognizable to, and understandable by, everyone else. We did this for a hundred years or more. We became Americans, first and foremost. We became perfect little plastic people.

 Then came the backlash – the surge toward ethnicity, toward recovering one’s roots. Corporations, recognizing a need they didn’t necessarily agree with but could not thwart, established boards and councils to explore, protect, and extend diversity. Government was forced to acknowledge heritage, and employ translators. Health care facilities complied readily; it’s hard to discover what hurts using elemental sign language. But some elemental acknowledgment of worth has been lost along the way. We have, in essence, agreed to disagree, but nobody’s willing to admit they are wrong. We pay lip service to diversity, but the whites hate the blacks, and vice versa, and everyone agrees the Latinos are gobbling up the jobs. Asians can’t drive worth a damn, Indians are all drunks, and those pathetic Eastern European Eurotrash brought their own Mafya.

 This is not diversity; it’s culture-clash. We still cling to that quaintly American notion that no one is as good as we are – whatever we are, and our current Commander-in-Chief exemplifies all that is wrong with us in our narrow-minded assumption that the perfect color is pale, the best language is American, and the most acceptable behavior is two parents working ten hours a day to buy their latch-key offspring electronic gadgets that keep families in touch with one another.

 Pathetic.