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Today I found this great infographic outlining several of the psychological tricks companies use to manipulate your spending. The best defense against this kind of thing is awareness. Make sure you know the basics and don't fall for their lies.

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Companies that are desperate to force you to look at their ads have been disguising them as traffic tickets which you'll surely not ignore. Even if the ad were fantastic, I think I'd throw it away as a matter of principle.

Note, this post begins a new category on my page dedicated to the low and dirty cheats among the market. It will serve as evidence for my continuing position that the market needs heavy and strict regulation to play fair.

Beware the puddle militia! They're gonna git ya!

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Privacy nuts like me have been warning people for years that tracking and tagging of all people will start with the kids. It's easy to teach people to accept personal tracking devices by giving it to them when they're young. But how do you do that? Use parents' practically fanatical protective instinct to protect their kids against a largely imaginary threat.

Companies that use scare tactics, especially when inflaming peoples fears of extreme and rare issues, are complete and utter scum.

It's totally safe... come closer.

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These infomercials are pretending to be news so you'll give them far more credibility that you would if you knew it was an infomercial.

Dirty bank, dirty deals

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Now here's a state with a Attorney General worth his salt! Richard Blumenthal is suing Countrywide and Bank of America for deceptive lending and is looking for some serious monetary damages to be paid out to the victims. This single move could save thousands of people from forclosures and distress. That's some serious protecting of the innocent. Way to go!

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Four people who had flown to DC to share their stories of credit woe with the congress members who are involved in the credit card bill of rights were deflected by a mandate by the committee that they must release their full financial history to the public (not just to the people involved in the committee, but the PUBLIC) before they could testify.

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Drug companies make so much money off their medicine, it's no leap to think that there's a vast amount of corruption in the industry.

Data brokering is dangerous and uncontrolled

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You know all those times I've complained about data brokering and how companies are able to hit us where we are weakest because of all they learn and profile about us? I'm not just making this stuff up.

Mr. Guthrie, who lives in Iowa, had entered a few sweepstakes that caused his name to appear in a database advertised by infoUSA, one of the largest compilers of consumer information. InfoUSA sold his name, and data on scores of other elderly Americans, to known lawbreakers, regulators say. InfoUSA advertised lists of "Elderly Opportunity Seekers," 3.3 million older people "looking for ways to make money," and "Suffering Seniors," 4.7 million people with cancer or Alzheimer’s disease. "Oldies but Goodies" contained 500,000 gamblers over 55 years old, for 8.5 cents apiece. One list said: "These people are gullible. They want to believe that their luck can change."

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For those who weren't paying attention, fears of child abduction and abuse are fairly overblown.

Although statistics show that rates of child abduction and sexual abuse have marched steadily downward since the early 1990s, fear of these crimes is at an all-time high. Even the panic-inducing Megan's Law Web site says stranger abduction is rare and that 90 percent of child sexual-abuse cases are committed by someone known to the child. Yet we still suffer a crucial disconnect between perception of crime and its statistical reality. A child is almost as likely to be struck by lightning as kidnapped by a stranger, but it's not fear of lightning strikes that parents cite as the reason for keeping children indoors watching television instead of out on the sidewalk skipping rope.

Why is this important? Because companies that want humans to accept RFID implantation will try to use fears of child abduction to sell their products. The industry wants this badly (and possibly the government too), because once people begin implanting children, no one will get them removed as adults and eventually, every citizen will have them. Once we are all tagged, we can be tracked wherever we go and whatever we do.

George W. Bush

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The "War on Terror" is political spin initiated by President Bush to justify using "wartime" powers indefinitely. Just like the "War on Drugs", the war on terror will never end.

Nobody disagrees to giving a little leeway to our commander in chief during a clear and present need, but that's the point: a war on terror that lasts an indefinite amount of time is neither clear, nor present.

It's about danged time that someone in a high position finally dropped this marketing ploy where it belongs.