If you live in Illinois, you may want to move (and not to California). As stated by the State Treasurer, you are on the line for $42,000 of state debt. Add $129,171 of U.S. debt per taxpayer not including unfunded liabilities and you are up to $171,171. Uh-oh!
Archive for the ‘Biblical Economics & Money’ Category
Fiscal Crisis continues
Tuesday, May 24th, 2011Parable of the Rich Fool
Wednesday, May 18th, 2011Let’s talk about money today:
Luke 12:16 Then He (Jesus) spoke a parable to them, saying: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded plentifully. 17 And he thought within himself, saying, ‘What shall I do, since I have no room to store my crops?’ 18 So he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build greater, and there I will store all my crops and my goods. 19 And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years; take your ease; eat, drink, and be merry.” ’ 20 But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul will be required of you; then whose will those things be which you have provided?’
21 “So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.”
How would you like to be called a “fool” by Our Heavenly Father? Ugggh! Try to read this post without being offended for your soul would have you believe otherwise for the ego wants to maintain control and one of the most precious topics to it is “money”. It is more subtly known as greed or coveting. The love of money or “greed” is the root of all evil. Why? It assumes that Our Heavenly Father does not love you and will not provide for you. It also assumes that the physical universe is the sum total of resources to sustain us, that is to say, the physical is superior to the spiritual.
I find that many wealthy people develop an attitude of entitlement as though they were created as special people with a special “anointing” to be rich. They are the upper echelon of humans living on earth thus they should have special privileges. Whether it be front row seats or the finest dining, the “entitled” continue their pursuit of “greater barns”. Wall Street is the culmination of that attitude. Lawlessness becomes a necessity for the rules must be bent in order to obtain the next million dollars. Before long, lawlessness is at the center of the person’s life. Our Heavenly Father has tagged them as “fools”.
On the other hand, Our Heavenly Father established a “barometer” among His people. Giving! By offering up your firstfruits, you establish that Our Heavenly Father is the ultimate source of our sustenance, not the world system.
Gen 14:18 And Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine: and he [was] the priest of the most high God. 19 And he blessed him, and said, Blessed [be] Abram of the most high God, possessor of heaven and earth: 20 And blessed be the most high God, which hath delivered thine enemies into thy hand. And he gave him tithes of all.
Abraham was no fool. He knew his future was not based on building bigger barns for he knew where his success came from. Tithing is a touchy subject with people. Each and every time the subject is brought up, people grab their wallets. This is partly due to what is in their heart. Deep down, they assume that the person bringing up the subject is trying in manipulate them and finagle money from their bank account. “To the pure, all things are pure.” One could say, “To the impure, all things are impure” as well. By the way, “tithing” began before the Mosaic Law was given. Yes, churches have used and abused tithing to extract money from the people. The tithe is Our Heavenly Father’s thus we should ask Our Heavenly Father where HE wants HIS money to go. That was easy!
Why tithe? You establish who god in your life: Our Heavenly Father or greed. It is a time to reflect of what is in your heart. If you are not a cheerful giver then you are not really giving out of Love but out of duty. Jesus was able to multiply resources as needed. Do you think Our Heavenly Father can’t do the same on our behalf? Do you seem to always be upside down on your monthly bills? It’s not about the money, it’s about the heart. Go ahead and rationalize away that you should not be a giver. That is your ego keeping you separated from the Kingdom of Our Heavenly Father. Fear, uncertainty, and doubt are the three sisters of the ego. Aspiring overcomers are known as “givers”, not “takers”. If you are waiting for your ship to come in before you start giving, you might as well go home for the ship will not arrive. Our Heavenly Father blesses stewards with more resources whereas the evil steward has his substance taken away.
By the way, don’t shoot the messenger.
Impoverishing a Generation
Tuesday, May 17th, 2011The Federal Reserve is removing the wealth from an entire generation of savers at an alarming rate. How are they doing this? By forcing short term interest rates well below 1% at the same time inflating the currency by printing money thus pressuring prices for food, energy. and healthcare up by double digits (6-15%). This results in confiscation of savings over the long haul. The problem: “What alternatives can they invest in and protect their principal?’”
The U.S. will continue to issue a substantial amount of debt. An American family’s largest debt is normally their mortgage debt which is supported by the asset value of their home. The problem is that the housing market continues to weaken thereby driving housing values down and an increasing number of borrowers are upside down on their mortgage. Couple this with the fact that the baby boomers are now wanting to downsize and get out of their mcmansions and you have a long-term trend of lower housing prices. In order to stay competitive, homebuilders are seeking lower bids from subcontractors. Some of those subcontractors are hiring illegal aliens from across the border to lower their costs. In many cases the quality goes down faster than the price. Also, the career construction subcontractors who obey the law are penalized and lose work. Nobody can calculate the underlying cost of the dynamics of the current situation.
Social security payments are not an entitlement but are “insurance” payments obligated by the Federal Government in most cases. Yes, there are those who paid in very little and have reaped much from the system. However, most of us have paid in for 40+ years and some of us paid double as business owners. We simply want the payments we deserve. There are entitlement programs such as food stamps but social security is not one of them.
In order to prop up an unsustainable paradigm, the Fed will continue to print money and politicians will continue to promise entitlements at the expense of multiple generations. Pain is coming. The only question is how much pain will each of us suffer? This pain will transition us into a new era.
Will this new era be the time that the overcomers take command? I hope so. There is a lot of cleanup work to do in the global arena. Death and destruction are the methods used commonly around the world. There is talk of removing excess population because of overcrowding and scarcity of resources to accommodate the current population. We need wisdom from above to solve the problems we are currently experiencing. Each of us needs to draw closer to Our Heavenly Father and seek HIS face. The closer you are, the easier it is to hear and respond. The answers are a whisper away.
Silver Manipulation & Management
Thursday, May 5th, 2011The fundamentals of silver continue to be strong but were due for a correction. $36 silver is the next support level. A major reason for the rapid and steep decline was a change in margin requirements for the paper market. This tends to remove under-funded speculators and the weak at heart.
Margin is collateral(stocks and/or cash) that the holder(speculator) of a financial instrument(silver contract) has to deposit to cover some or all of the credit risk of his counterparty (most often his broker or an exchange).
For instance, if the margin requirement is 25% then the speculator can buy $10,000 in futures contracts with a minimum of $2,500 in cash or stock in the trading account to cover the margin. However, if the trading exchange increases margin to 50%, then the speculator must come up with another $2,500 to bring his balance to $5,000. Often the trader will begin closing out his outstanding contracts to cover his new margin requirement. With more sellers doing this, the market drops as it did last week.
A trading exchange will protect itself by increasing margin requirement to the borrowers of assets. Margin can go to 100% if the volatility is too risky for the exchange (management) or if they want to temporarily move the market down(manipulation). The good news for those of us who believe that the long term fundamentals support higher prices is that soon we will have another buying opportunity for metals and their underlying stocks. When will be the optimum time to add to positions? Only Our Heavenly Father knows for sure.
The news: CME Group, operator of the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange, announced a pair of margin increases late Wednesday, the first of which goes into effect after Thursday’s close and another on Monday. Additionally, the Shanghai Gold Exchange raised the margin requirement for silver contracts. “This has prompted many investors to withdraw from the silver market, reflected in outflows from silver ETFs,” Commerzbank says. “Yesterday, the world’s largest silver ETF, iShares Silver Trust, reported the second-largest daily outflow since the fund was launched, at 522 tons. The price correction is likely to continue.”
Approaching Critical Mass of Destiny
Wednesday, May 4th, 2011The inhabitants of the earth are quickly moving toward the point of unsustainability under the current paradigm. Assumptions that prosperity is achieved by economic growth and expansion have just about run their course. During the period of cheap energy this held true. But with the current population growth and the end of cheap energy, the increasing scarcity of potable water, and the pollutants given off by current production, man’s destiny is at a crossroads. Governments have produced cynical masses of people who cannot seem to find out the truth of the matter only to be given the excuse of “greater good” as the response for their actions. Now, who is it that determines “greater good”?
The global economy is teetering on economic meltdown with all of the financial derivatives that have been created in an unregulated environment. Unbridled money creation is sure to decimate generational savers who operated in a prudent manner and punish them for taking the right economic path. Resource grabs by countries with strong militaries are upon us. The illusion of the American Dream where everyone lives happily ever after has been perpetuated by television, movies, and the media and exported around the world with new technologies. Simplification has been replaced by unsustainable complexity of technology.
Where’s the Love in all this? Facebook doesn’t communicate the tender touch of two people in love, the hug from a grandparent to the grandchild, nor the loving, reassuring smile from a husband to a wife. Wall Street has the ability with its access to virtually unlimited funds to manipulate the cost of food thus creating civil unrest in countries where food costs are a critical part of a family’s monthly expense. Add a few little twitter comments that make the rounds among the young and impressionable and you have a toppled government.
What is the solution? An outbreak of Love. The revelation of Love is at a level above all the problems listed. The solution to a problem is always at least one level of awareness above the level of the problem. The problem would not have developed if there had been awareness at that level. The only way for mankind to move away from this point of unsustainability is to gain an awareness that has proven to be elusive. It has been elusive because man has preferred to live in an illusion rather than seek the reality found in the simplicity of Love. The Scripture covers the many facets of the war of the carnal man against the spiritual man. As long as the ego is in control, we are headed for a cliff. But once Love assumes command, illusions will be shattered, mankind will move to a higher level of awareness, and solutions to all the problems that plague us today will become self-evident truths.
Energy Reality
Wednesday, April 27th, 2011Total global energy consumption continues to rise. Renewable energy is a very low percentage of the total energy supplied. Liquid fuels (oil) provides 95% of the transportation energy requirements, 2% from natural gas, and 3% from renewable energy. The reason for this is that oil has a very high energy content. Ethanol, on the other hand, has about 1 unit of energy consumed to produce 1 unit of energy content and the fresh water consumed makes it a bad choice all together. This energy content of ethanol explains the lower gas mileage we experience when using an ethanol blend. Also, it gums up my scooter carburetor. That cost me some money to find that fact out when it wouldn’t start.
Wind energy infrastructure requires a backup system such as natural gas. Wind can stop at any moment and you must have a reliable backup, probably natural gas generators. Solar output needs sunlight. Watch out for those pesky clouds.
Most green energy jobs are currently lawyers and lobbyists. Think about it.
Until Our Heavenly Father opens up a true alternative to petroleum, oil is king of the energy complex. The American infrastructure is geared to oil and transforming to a “green” economy will be costly. At a time when our economy is on unstable footing, where will the money come from?
At this writing, natural gas looks like it will be in strong demand for the foreseeable future. Can it stay this cheap for long?
$100,000,000 per hour
Sunday, April 17th, 2011Yes, that is how much the U.S. deficit is growing. How long can this continue? Ronald Reagan wanted smaller government. Since then, government has grown to the point where the generated deficit cannot be sustained much longer. We are at a crossroads now. Taxing the entrepreneurs will only reduce economic expansion and increase unemployment. John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan inspired Americans to dream big at a time when many were discouraged workers. “The people perish without a vision”.
The potential cuts in the future currently being discussed is simply slowing the deficit growth, not resolving it.
Swiss financial journalist Myret Zaki: “The collapse of the American dollar… is inevitable. The world’s biggest economy is nothing but an illusion. To produce $14,000 billion of nation income, the United States has created over $50,000 billion of debt that costs it $4,000 billion in interest payments each year.”
“They (U.S.) can expect a very long period of austerity, which has already begun. Forty-five million Americans have already lost their homes, one third of the population is out of the economic system and is not spending, while a number of states are bankrupt. There is nowhere prosperous anymore. Everything is built on debt.” See: http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/Home/Archive/Dollar_faces_extinction.html?cid=30012940
Proverbs 22:7 The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is the slave of the lender. (ESV)
Slavery is a reality whether it be to a lender or “stuff” that has been accumulated over the years. How many times do you move those things when looking for something important? Being a slave to debt & stuff keeps you from focusing on serving others and being a blessing of Love. This is true for a nation as it is true for an individual.
The 411 on Taxes
Monday, April 11th, 2011The 411 (information) on 2010 tax realities is as follows”
You and I pay our “fair share” of taxes.
General Electric did not pay any: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/business/economy/25tax.html
You and I have no say in how our taxes are spent. From a practical standpoint, Washington is shielded from the taxpayer. There is so much data and information withheld from us for the “greater good” that we are unable to properly vote issues and political offices intelligently. The Tax Code is so complex, only tax professionals can use the code to their benefit. Large institutions lobby for special breaks that the general public is never aware of. Last week’s negotiated spending cut was equivalent to a rounding error.
I believe that “fair share” means everyone pays a similar percentage of their gross income. Currently lower income families pay nothing but use a greater portion of public assets and resources as a percentage. There are many cases of welfare assistance where the recipient simply works the system. Subsidizing laziness is not the solution to growth and prosperity.
The term “fair share” is really getting old. Once Our Heavenly Father deals out righteous judgment based on “fair share”, I suspect that term will go by the wayside.
A Subtle Reality
Sunday, April 10th, 2011Christina Romer is the former top economic advisor for President Obama. I find it interesting in her interview that she mentions the “real” unemployment rate (15.7%) rather than just the popular number (8.8%) used by politicians. She also suggests that a weaker dollar is good for America.
A weaker dollar is good for those who have invested heavily in precious metals and energy. It is bad for inflation-sensitive purchases. Our debt-based economy is difficult to manage and someone is going to lose, most probably the average worker. Wall Street was saved at the expense of us all. How many Treasury Secretary’s and economic advisors have worked or consulted with the same Wall Street firms that were saved? Nobody has gone to jail for those fraudulent securities that nearly brought down the global financial system.
Until the average American wakes up and realizes that the politicians have no real solutions to the problems plaguing the economy, we are destined to repeat the mistakes currently being made. When 1 out of 6 people are unemployed and we hear the popular version of 1 in 11 are unemployed, our response is different. Management by perception can last only so long.
The photo ops this week concerning the government shutdown seemed like a circus. Clearly with a structurally unsound economy in the balance, do you think they would worsen the problem with a shutdown? It would be interesting to have heard the conversations behind closed doors.
Notable day for Gold & Silver
Wednesday, April 6th, 2011I watch a few precious metals stock on a daily basis: Goldcorp, U.S. Gold, & Silvercorp. Yesterday, all three broke through notable barriers on the upside. Goldcorp has had a problem staying above $50 but blew through it yesterday:
Silvercorp’s chart:
U.S. Gold:
This day was a memorable day for these and other stocks in this category. All three stocks rose on strong volume and I suspect the Wall Street insiders are now seeing upside potential. I have ownership in all three but would not recommend purchasing these stocks after this run up unless Our Heavenly Father were to tell you specifically to buy these. After a day like this, there is normally some pullback. A bull market is known for “bucking off” investors on the downside.
Now that gold has busted through the $1,440 target, I am focused on the $1,530 level. It will be interesting to see if silver finds major resistance at the $40 level. Round numbers tend to be a resistance level. Once $40 is breached with resolve, I look at $51 silver as the next area of focus.
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