Inside the world of Rob Mclean, Author

So Ben Bernanke, previous head of the federal reserve (and the man we can thank for the housing bubble and collapse of 2008, in conjunction with his predecessor and mentor Alan Greenspan), just pulled in a cool $250,000 for a 40 minute speech in Abu Dhabi . That's more than he made in an entire year as head of the federal reserve. If anyone believes that someone gets paid $250,000 for 40-minutes of their time just to "speak" I've got some property I want to sell you.

So while Russia is invading Ukraine, Obama is doing Internet comedy to drum up enrollment in Obamacare? Such a bad PR move here. Yes, the interview is hilarious. Does it make you like Obama more? Sort of, I guess. Does it reinforce confidence in him as Commander in Chief? Not in the least. This is one of those PR stunts which seems like a good idea and gets TONS of media attention, but which down the road actually hurts your brand. It's one thing to "connect" with people if you are the President, it's another thing to play the role of the clown making them laugh.  I honestly don't know what Obama's PR folks are thinking doing this kind of thing, other than on the surface it seems like a 'hip cool' thing to do. 

So things are a mess in Ukraine and we're getting to see how PR is being twisted and used for propaganda purposes, by both the Americans and the Russians. What makes this interesting is that it's really the first time we're getting to see Russia play the propaganda game using PR. In the past, outside of Western countries, propaganda was more of a marketing tool. This time around though Russia is showing its PR chops in the propaganda wars. So let's look at what the situation with Ukraine is and then what we're getting from Russia and from the US. Ukraine - what's really going on? You can fact check my interpretation of events, but basically this is more of an economic issue. Ukraine is bankrupt. They need $35B to get through the next two years. The European Union and the West saw this as an opportunity to expand Nato influence and offered to "help them out" with a billion or so, with more to come as required via the IMF. Russia stepped in tho...