The Dow Jones industrials surged more than 200 points in yet another volatile session as investors were ringing with the news that the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority said it will invest $7.5 billion in Citigroup Inc., the largest bank in the US. Who knows why Wall Street is so delighted with the news that Citigroup has sacrificed 5% of their company’s interests to a foreign entity and with the whopping 11% interest on the Citigroup/Abu Dhabi deal, it’s even more of an unappealing situation in the eyes of many long term investors.

A pullback in already inflated oil prices aided the US market’s gains today. A barrel of light, sweet crude dropped $3.28 to $94.42 on the New York Mercantile Exchange based entirely on expectations that the Organization for Petroleum Exporting Countries will raise production at its Dec. 5 meeting (which is highly unlikely).

In other news, Senator Trent Lott, the former Senate Majority Leader, who had been re-elected to a fourth term in 2006, announced his plans to resign before the end of the year. While there is rampant speculation as to the reason Lott has decided to resign yesterday, the truth of the matter is both he and Illinois Republican and former Speaker of House, Dennis Hastert are hoping to land lucrative lobbyist contracts in Washington. With the old ethics rule of one year restriction on outgoing members of Congress from accepting lobbyist poistions being changed to two years as of January 2008, it’s no suprise both Lott and Hastert decided to “cut and run” with their 80% of $175,000 per year pension before signing lurcative deals with Washington lobbyists a year from now. Expect to see more Republicans following Lott and Hastert’s lead and bailing on the Grand old Party.

It’s no suprise the market’s are down again today. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 237 points or -1.83%, but the real news is the closing price of Google Inc., you know, the one with the company motto “Do no Evil”…

Well, you can pretty much expect the market will continue sliding downward for the rest of this week. There might be some slightly positive days on Wednesday or Thursday, but the trading pattern that’s exhibiting itself and the current economic situations in the US forecast a dismal week on Wall Street.

You’ve probably seen this banner to the left while surfing the internet, about a “Beach Bum” who is making millions of dollars with his laptop.If you’re an avid internet marketer or entrepeneur there’s no way you could overlook the latest “Big Program”. In two short months, Ty Coughlin’s Reverse Funnel System has invaded the internet by storm, taking up ground in every corner of the internet imaginable. From Myspace to Squidoo to Facebook to YouTube, invading ever marketing blog, popping up in every traffic exchange, autosurf, PPC advertising program, every nook and cranny, there’s no where you can go to escape it. The reach of this program is highly remniscent of 12DailyPro’s saturation in 2005, when you couldn’t spend more than a half hour on the internet without seeing a 12DailyPro banner or advertisment somewhere.

Is The Reverse Funnel System an MLM ?

From what I’ve seen of the Reverse Funnel System, it doesn’t seem like there is an actual product that is being promoted but the general idea is to promote and encourage new members into the program. While many conventional MLM’s have an element of roping in new members to earn from the program, they also have some sort of product they are promoting as well. When I think of MLM’s, the first thing that comes to mind is Amway and Herbalife, both of which have useless products that are horribly overpriced. Both Amway and Herbalife are the scourge of the working world and anybody who has ever worked in a large office has experienced that terribly over-zealous co-worker who tries to push the products on everybody in the work enviornment much like Jehova Witnesses knock on doors seeking to convert people.

Enter the Kool-Aid Drinking

For those who are unaware what the term “Kool-Aid Drinking” means, it’s a reference to the Rev. Jim Jones and his infamous Peoples Temple that left the United States citing religious persecution and relocated to Jonestown, Guyana in the 1970’s. Eventually, the cult commit mass suicide by drinking poisoned Kool-Aid resulting in one of the most bizzare and tragic genocidal incedents in modern times. The reference to “Kool-Aid Drinking” in today’s internet marketing community refers to any cultish group of people who follow through blind devotion with a dollar bill dangling in front of their face and a whip being cracked across their back. A good example of “Kool-Aid Drinking” is the marketing flop Agolco. When Agloco debuted, thousands upon thousands of people flocked to the new messiah and proclaimed Agloco to be “the answer”, yet almost a full year later, Agloco is all but washed up and burnt out with nobody having earned a dime for all their hard work. As if people haven’t wised up yet, I’m seeing the same people who praised and hailed Agloco now hailing Ty Coughlin as the second coming of Christ and The Reverse Funnel System as the answer to all their prayers.

So What About all Those People With Expensive Cars and Big Houses on Ty’s Site?

I have to admit, in one respect it makes me want to laugh and in another respect it makes me want to cry when I see the affiliate pages for the Reverse Funnel System. The testimonials are what interest me the most because for a program that’s not even two months old yet, it’s quite impossible for those people with the fancy cars and big houses to have profited enough from Ty’s program to make those high dollar purchases. Intrinsicly, the advertising is false and misleading and although most entrepeneurs are intelligent enough to see through the thinly veiled disguise, the fact remains that many, many stupid people will fall for the bling bling and part with their hard earned money and part with their time only to make the people at the top of the food chain fatten their wallets.

Reverse Funnel or Reverse Psychology?

The thing that turns me off the most to The Reverse Funnel System is the high pressure sales pitch. Especially when the dialogue goes into a rant about potential associates needing several thousand dollars to get started and then it switches into the minimal $50 fee, then back again into the principle that “it takes money to make money”. I had to take a dramamine pill for motion sickness after reading halfway through the sales pitch. For all the hullaballoo and hot air, there was still nothing I found tangible or concrete about the offer. There was no honest and open disclosure of how the system really works, just a whole lot of promising doubletalk and typical marketing fluff I’ve seen a thousand times over.

Is There Any Hope for an Average Person to Make Money With RFS?

If you haven’t been suckered into this clever little game yet and are still contemplating joining, do yourself a favor and first check out how saturated this program is in Google Adwords and realize that the pyramid has already been built several layers already by the professional hustlers and marketing players.

The Mother Theresa of Making Money

There’s one particular point that needs to be addressed whenever somebody tells you they’re going to share their “secret for success” for a price. If the secret recipe were really so lucrative, why on earth would somebody water down their business earnings by selling their ideas to others? From a business perspective that just doesn’t make sense. All great companies and corporations protect their secrets at all costs so as not to dilute their income streams. There are no “Good Samaratin’s” in the business world and anybody who would try to tell you otherwise has a vested interest in your pocketbook. While believing in dreams is a positive thing, believing in somebody else’s dreams will only cause you to lose sleep.

Trickle Down Economics and the Funnel Spill-Over

Every single one of these “systems” claims there is a “trickle down” cashflow, meaning when your upline’s referrals max out, further referrals will “spill over” into your account. As many times as I’ve heard these claims made by the system managers and promoters, I’ve never heard a single person state that they had earned from “spill over”. Considering the nature of these programs and how people get hyped, surely there would be some evidence that this trickle down theory actually exists as anything more as another marketing ploy.

Closing Comments

While at Code4Gold, we do not pretend to be an authority or a legal organization, we are here to merely offer a differing opinion to the cheerleaders and promoters. The final decision to join or not to join “The Reverse Funnel System” is yours and yours alone. I have personally submitted my email to this program for more information as promised on the homepage but all I’ve received is a daily does of spam email with different pitches all leading back to the same old marketing page. So, if you do decide to take a shot with this, one thing I do recommend is signing up a free email account with Yahoo or Gmail for this program alone, because like “Death of Adsense” or any of these marketing extravaganzas, you will receive spam for years to come if you give an email address you care about.

Feel free to discuss this topic at our forums :
Is Ty Coughlin’s Reverse Funnel System Legit or a Scam?

In a war over gas prices, the seemingly petty back-and-forth bickering between two rival gas station owners in Detroit, Michigan ended in tragedy as one of the men shot and killed the other over the lowering of prices by 3 cents.

A fatal bullet to BP station owner Jawad Bazzi’s head was the end result of Bazzi walking across the street with a couple of employees to confront the Marathon owner, Hussah Masboath, and his posse regarding Masboath dropping his price from $2.93 from $2.96 per gallon.

The two groups of Middle Eastern men argued in Arabic, then began throwing punches. One of Bazzi’s employees hit a Marathon employee with a baseball bat, severely injuring him. That’s when the Marathon owner grabbed his handgun and fired three or four times hitting Jawad Bazzi, 45, of Dearborn Heights was shot in the head.

Sgt. Eren Stephens Bell, a spokeswoman for the Detroit police told reporters that the shooter and Marathon owner, Hussah Masboath was taken into police custody. Additionally Bell said that charges had not yet been filed against the alleged gunman.

Following the “Gas War” shooting, Masboath’s Marathon station was closed by law enforcement but the dead man Bazzi’s family and employees took advantage of losing their competition and hiked prices 13 cents per gallon to $3.09.

Wall Street got a much needed boost on Tuesday, bringing the Dow Jones industrials nearly 320 points higher. The change was welcome by investors and consumers alike because the rally was sparked after reassuring news from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. quelled some of the market’s worst fears about the credit crisis and the economy. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. reported third-quarter profits which surpassed projections and suggested that consumer spending might be stronger than anticipated for this holiday shopping season. The results also showed that heavy discounting during the period did not hurt margins, which the company said bodes well for their fourth quarter earnings potential. Although the news from Wal-Mart is encouranging, it is to be taken with a grain of salt due to the fact that Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, and the biggest discounter of consumer goods would have a tendency to see volume spending during times of financial uncertainty. As an indicator of this consumer trend to save money by shopping at Wal-Mart when pennies are being pinched, a quick glance at higher end retaliers such as Macy’s shows that consumers are looking for bargins, not luxury items.

Oil prices once again played a part in today’s volatile movement in the market with a plunge in the price of oil giving investors further incentive to buy. A sharp decline in energy prices also encouraged Wall Street into bullish territory. Oil prices plummeted after the International Energy Agency reduced its expectations for demand in the fourth quarter and next year and said crude supplies are growing. Light, sweet crude for December delivery fell $3.45 to settle at $91.17 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Today’s patterns fit a typical “Comeback Tuesday” effect and more likely than not, Wednesday will follow suit but with smaller, sheepish gains leading into Thursday’s levelling off and the market staying flat across the board. If the pattern holds, Friday will see a downturn once again because the current US Markets are on a volatile ride compared to their counterparts around the world.

Overseas, Japan’s Nikkei stock average fell 0.46 percent and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index rose 0.50 percent. In Europe, Britain’s FTSE 100 rose 0.39 percent, Germany’s DAX index fell 0.38 percent, while France’s CAC-40 added 0.06 percent.

When you compare the other major world markets daily percentage gains and losses to the +2.46% gain in the Dow Jones industrials today and the -2% losses seen in the previous week, it seems the US markets are extremely temperamental and the lack of stability does not appeal to the average investor.