Angel Investors

I have a piece of gold in hand.  I have one of the best pieces of gold on the planet.  However, I don’t quite know what gold is. Plus, I don’t quite know how to buy and sell gold.  Plus, once I have bought and sold the gold, I am completely screwed, to put it simply, I am broke.  So, what do I do?

This is the basic way to describe someone who has a new business, or a good idea, or a good piece of Intellectual Property, but they are unable to get a loan from a bank or financing company, plus they would not even know what to do once they received that money.  So, they go off in search of something called an Angel Investor, or possibly much worse, they are approached by one or a group of them, often called the Midwest Angels, or some stupid name like that.

The typical scenario occurs like this.  The angel says, hey, I like that huge diamond in your hand.  Here is an astronomical figure that will make your eyes spin like a cartoon character.  While your eyes are busy spinning, we are going to spend about an hour in an attorney’s office, write up a contract (one of many different possible kinds).  Then I am just going to be on my way. Maybe I will have a slightly less despicable heart, or maybe I will be an angel group that is somehow masquerading as a religious organization or cult of some kind, but in the end I just want to grab your ENTIRE piece of gold, and then push you off a cliff, aka leave you with nothing.

Now you must understand, as with anything regarding angel investing or really economics in general, it is a battle.  One man pulls a gun, the other man pulls a gun, and the bullet that lands faster wins. However, in economics it goes more like this.  I am a more courageous man, hence I can literally walk into any door, anywhere in the world, and walk out with whatever I want regardless of which door it was.  If I am a weak man, then I don’t even think about trying to get out of bed that morning, instead I sip some liquor, watch some TV, and then in two weeks, my landlord puts me on the street.

People think angel investors can be good things, when in fact they never are. Why? The deal. The deal is always a poor one. The reason these groups exist is because they are made up of people who start life trying hard, surviving the market for maybe 20 or so years, then try their hand at angel investing, either individually or in a group.  Angel investing can even get so sophisticated that they arrange strategies for taking over boards of companies, coups of governments, or maybe just financially pillaging super wealthy individuals who are unaware of how to play the game of economics. While economics is less a game and more a way to eat each day, some people look at it that way.

Banks

When did 1 + 1 become 2? That was the last time we had a separate bank.

For many centuries it has been known by the wise men in the village that whoever acted as the “banker” for the village or tribe was really just travelling vast distances to make sure that whatever he was trusted with got to its destination. He was very dedicated to this mission, so dedicated that he would agree to do it on a regular basis. Soon enough, he would make a trip once a year, or once a month, whatever was required.

In today’s world, as we watch the dollars and cents fly across the CNBC screen every morning, we see the opinions of the world’s top bankers. Guys who run places like Credit Suisse, Wells Fargo, and Bank of Japan. In truth these gentlemen can do something very sophisticated called…sending one another an email.

We begin to ask ourselves why we bank at one bank as opposed to another. What is it that makes me go there instead of here? Well, in my market, a mid-market in the USA, I have accounts at one credit union, and two banks. One of the banks has a branch next to the credit union, and the other bank. The size of all three is quite large, except the bank I use for my business, the one that is a neighbor to the other two, is the largest in the world.

People use something they want to consider as separate banks. Unfortunately, the entire world has always run on something called “word of mouth”. That means no matter where you are, who you are, what you have done, you can be considered as someone who is not worth doing business with a bank. That means that this world has never for one second had anything that can be considered any “separation” of trust.

Now, you may think that trust is a boyfriend/girlfriend thing. In truth, trust is what makes the world move. If all of us think we will die, watch as we slowly kill each other as outlined in the previous chapter. We will simply not believe each other has the others’ best interests at heart. Then we will turn on each other and conflict will get worse and worse. It happens between friends, spouses, governments…everywhere.

The concept of separate banks is exactly that, a concept. When you stand at a four way intersection in Mecca, and see Bank of Punjab, Bank of Mujab, Bank of Punam, and Bank of Tajib…you may as well be in New York City, where we have Chase, Citibank, Wells Fargo, and Wachovia.

Oh wait, Wachovia changed into WF in 2009 because the world’s government decided a recession was necessary.

Capitalism

At the core of every solid business in every nation on the globe, there are two key components, free labor, and an established gift model (aka con game).

Throughout history we are told that one of the things the United States civil war did was to end slavery in this country. Unfortunately, that was nowhere near the case. We were told about black heroes like Harriet Tubman, and Frederick Douglass, who were big advocates and risk-takers on behalf of black people in this country. Of course, also had white gentlemen like Abraham Lincoln who were killed due to their proponent of non-slavery in this country. However, the slave trade is still alive and well.

In most states in this country we still have clauses to certain types of employment. Waiting tables is the most obvious example. If you are a waiter or a waitress in a restaurant, you may make 2 or three dollars an hour, but then of course you pocket whatever tips you make pick up during your shift. However, it is up to your employer which shifts you receive, and he may make that decision based on many factors, all of which are up to him. Sometimes the more attractive people might get the better shifts because the customers are naturally happier to see them. Sometimes the younger waiters might get the busier shifts because they have more energy and can just flat out haul ass faster. Whatever the case may be, the only thing the owner of the restaurant or franchise business wants is for the product to get to the customer faster so he can get HIS food pellet faster. Because after all, he is still believing, as he has his whole life, that he is fed by food pellets and not something greater.

In every business there is a grift. That means that every day there is an established model where the customer enters into an agreement with the business owner, and comes away with something thinking they have gained, but have lost true economic value. Now you may ask yourself, how can this be true? I just bought a car or a house for half the price of the market value! I must have gotten some true economic value. But the problem reverts to something I spoke of in my beginning course. The goal of economics is not to gain value, it is to gain relationships with people that increase the power of the thoughts and actions of both parties. The actual numbers you are seeing on that financial statement, or that check from the bank…. has no actual worth in this world and never will. There is one reason why you do anything, and that is so your child or your spouse or maybe your parent(s), or you, can spend another day here, and be happier during it.

However, an argument suddenly presents itself! We need certain things like a car, house, food, and clean water. Parents want a great education for their kids. Most adults want to enjoy a successful career either to build a stack of money, to get famous, or to gain just general status in their industry. However, I ask you to break all of that down to the core. What do you think any of that really gets you? What it begins to do is run you around in a circular logic pattern, where once you achieve one of those goals, you are forced to achieve a bigger one, to support the former smaller one. That pattern, once you are in it, propagates itself to such a degree that it never stops. We as humans, when we are young, say there is no problem with this. We are okay busting ass for 30 years if when we are 50, we are rich, with a big house, and a great set of cars, and an awesome beautiful wife and maybe five incredibly well-educated kids. The problem is that most people find it is not realistic. We are unable to physically and mentally pull it off even when supported by immense business structures and delegation and grift structures and intense labor coerced workforces. We just cannot do it. We hit 50, we are a mess, our families are a mess, and we have some money, but we don’t even care that we have it, we just want to be 20 again when our minds were more joyful, and not nearly as destroyed by the rigors of chasing that next greenback.

The best strategy in life is to do what you want, every single day. Spend as much time as you want with as many people as you want. Help them as much as you want. Then just go to bed. Then wake up and repeat. If you ever want to change that routine, change it, but I assure you, wandering from “THAT BUSINESS” will only send you down a course of pain and heartache and an older life filled with 20/20 hindsight that tells you that you have completely wasted the few mature decades you were only ever going to get.

Don’t waste your time. Kiss your kids. Hug your wife. Go have some fun.

Countries

At least here in the wonderful USA, for many decades now, in our freshman year of high school, they have us read a book called Lord of the Flies. It is about how when left to their own devices, isolated on a tropical island and unable to be retrieved, a group of young teen boys breaks into two tribes, and begins to slaughter each other. Of course, the entire conflict is set off by one boy’s vision of a disgusting pig’s head on a stick, who he aptly labels the “Lord of the Flies”.

Well, he brings this “vision” back to his tribe, and begins to make all these fanciful stories up about how to kill all the boys in the other tribe, because this powerful lord has given him the wisdom to know exactly how to do it. Plus, they require the knowledge they need to save their own hide. Well, the funny thing about this book is that while it was written many decades ago, by a man named William Golding, it was proven in an actual social experiment many years later.

Taking the concept from that book, and not even worrying about the male side of it, or the freaky pig’s head side of it, they just asked for collegiate age volunteers who had a few weeks to kill one summer, to see if they were willing to participate in a ground-breaking experiment. Of course, none of the participants knew any of the other participants and were all “collected” from separate schools around the country.

After the scientists had an equal number of college students, all they did was place them on two different sides of an island. Not an enormous island, but sizeable enough. The scientists gave them no instruction. The students asked what they were supposed to do. The scientists merely said not to worry, we will pick you up in a couple weeks. Then off they went in their boats.

However, the big secret was that the scientists already were quite certain they knew what would happen because they had played out the scenario in mathematical models based on historical accounts of conflicts between different countries over many years. But as science always wants to do, ALWAYS wants to do is prove they are correct, based on their theories.

When they returned, one group of students was completely dead, and the other was completely alive, purely because the scientists were right. The students had proven the US vs. THEM concept AKA the fact that when people are separated by any type of divide, whether it be distance, commonality, cultural doctrine, religious doctrine, intellect level…whichever group is able to obtain an advantage over the other faster, WILL, and then do their best to completely and totally kill them.

Currency

Take a peek at that cash or coin sitting in your pants pocket or purse pouch. Take a good long look at it. First, pick out the words on it. The words say something to the effect of: In God We Trust. Then look at that currency some. It has symbols on it, some random coding that you have to research in order to understand, and then it has a historical figurehead. Now here is the real bit of information I want you to just swallow down like a meal: That currency looks about the same as it did thousands of years ago, country to country. It has never really changed.

Why does currency not change? Well, it is a programming tool, and now in the techno-age, it is a tracking tool as well. It tells things to our minds when we look at it. It tells us that we can trust in a disembodied invisible entity that supposedly runs our complete reality, and it tells us there is a human figurehead, or multiple ones from the past, that have helped to keep that reality sewn together so it doesn’t fall apart. Hence we have this wonderful thing called money that we can hold in our hands, and hand to another human being or organization, and then they will give us something important, in fact, sometimes the only thing that is important…food.

Do you know how to grow food? If you had to, could you care for a milking cow, or beef cow, or maybe plant a row of tomatoes…and not screw up the whole process? Or could you even take a rod and reel, and just saunter down to the local river, and walk away with a few salmon or catfish, probably the best fish to just slice down and cook a little, and then toss chunks of it down your throat? For most people, the answers are no, so we are told we need something called currency.

As we exit high school or college or the military, we are typically told to go find a job or start a business. Well, the usual advice is such: find a job you can get, and then get up for and get to, every single day for a few years. Then maybe if you are lucky the people in power at your organization, whether it be a public or private organization, might force you to work more, tell you it is a good thing, and then tell you the excuse for this “improvement” is more currency. The same goes for owning a business. You are told you must collect investors, aka people you are borrowing money from, or people you are asking to throw money at you on the off chance you can figure out a scam no other business has succeeded at, like selling people bottles of water when it is the same as tap water. Then, when your business succeeds, at least you are allowed to keep a fraction of the massive amount of work you have done to produce…nothing the world has not seen before.

So, what we begin to understand is that currency is a psychology trick that we play into. We look at it. Feel better. We put it in the bank, feel better. Pretend that it can possibly save us from death or extend our lives by paying for exceptional medical care, so we feel better. We pay for better education for our kids with it, so we feel better about their future, and possibly our own because we hope our kids may do a good job of stewarding our future should we need it due to any one of several things that happens to humans. What we begin to realize currency is, in truth, is a feel better machine. It makes you feel good.

Without feeling good, what would we have? Well, we might have the truth. We might realize it was never there in the first place. All these actions, pros and cons and pluses and minuses, all would have happened anyway, except the government and banks would not have been able to inject their programming and tracking into our lives. Hence the best decision is to use the currency to your heart’s desire, but know that it does not exist, never did, and if you do anything with it, use it to manipulate the government and banks to the highest degree possible, but not other people.

Doctorates

When I was a kid, I was given a first person look at what a doctorate would get me in life. My father was a private sector lawyer, who ran a two-man practice with my grandfather in 1970’s New Orleans. I thought the place was nice. In fact, it impressed me to a certain degree. It seemed like they had lots of business since people were always coming in for appointments. I liked using the Macintoshes they had (the first ones ever in 1982), and I thought the four phone lines required for their two secretaries and themselves were fun to play around on. Hence, I started life with a positive view of a doctorate and considered one or two for myself. Then I got a little older.

I had a discussion or three with my dad’s younger brother who had a doctorate in business. He taught business at several New Orleans schools, and contributed to the creation of several textbooks on the subject. He seemed like a very learned gentleman, and quite the charismatic guy. His wife was beautiful and kind, and their parties were always fun. He had a nice house and his background was of course like my father’s, both valedictorians of their high school, a Catholic institution. So here were two examples for me to derive my early opinion from. Then I got to a place called college.

Every single person I knew who wanted to make a lot of money was declaring they were going to law school or med school. Neither of these opinions made sense to me. Why? Well, I thought you were supposed to enjoy your life. I thought the money side was not supposed to matter. I thought that if you wanted to surf your whole life, just move to Hawaii possibly and do that. I did not understand this chase for the buck. But there was just SUCH a crowd of students who were into this dream.

Now I must admit, as I moved through my teen years, I had picked up a penchant for computer games and a collectible card game called Magic. Both worlds had a kind of techno/business side to it. The Internet was just beginning to come into its own, and I even worked for an ISP, an Internet Service Provider, which were all over the place in the late 1990’s. So, I chose to study Management Information Systems, which was a combination of computers and business. However, I had no idea how intensely hard and how intensely expensive it would be.

As I got a bead on the best way to get through college and not be completely destitute as I left, assuming I graduated, I realized this whole MD or law school dream that most kids were forming in their heads either were insane or had been put there by their super rich parents. My parents were not super rich. My father was a public sector lawyer by then, and my two younger brothers were not proving to be any dynamos at life, so I chose a conservative path. I went to a state college down the street from my parents’ house and I wrote off the idea of a doctorate. Now here is the wisdom I gained twenty years post that decision.

It really did seem to be that while medical school was an impossible dream, even for the sharpest kids, the real money was in business. The kids that got doctorates, if they taught, they had gotten stuck there because that is what doctorates do, they tend to trap you in education. Now I do like to study, as silly as that may sound. Plus, I like writing and researching, another absurd idea. But, my sound plan of avoiding a doctorate at all costs, just so I would not be lost in the murky world of advanced education till my dying day…appears to have worked out.

Education

In the USA, high school is all you need. Surprised? Well, here is the problem folks.

Everyone seems to be studying intense subjects because they want to hammer bigger checks. Everyone. The priests, the politicians, the professors. Those jobs where you think they want to help people, is usually just done so they can have a steak instead of a chicken. Pretty sad really, but quite true.

Now, the best move for anyone coming directly out of high school is to start buying and selling things. I do not mean stock. I do not mean something illegal. I mean anything. Get your brain geared towards buying and selling because when you climb the ranks of any profession, that is what you do anyway. So, if you start doing that now, you are better off. Plus, you do not blast your parents’ savings on a college education that is diluted with tons of scams and terrible risks.

I did get a Bachelor of Science myself, but in business/technology from a cheap school down the street from my parents’ house where I lived. Plus, I had free tuition because my dad was a disabled veteran. So, I had to pay for books and food, and that was it. If I moved through fast enough, everything was fine. By the time I finished college, I was the only guy I knew who was not in debt and had a stack of cash saved up from a job I enjoyed fixing computers for the state of California.

Listen, if you want to cut people open for a living and pretend it is holy or something, that is great. But we all just work for checks. The fastest way to get to the biggest check is to buy and sell at the earliest age possible. Do not borrow. Do not go to jail. Do not get killed. If you need help, find ANYONE who might be able to offer ADVICE. But only FREE advice. Then just keep going guys. Because…EDUCATION past HIGH SCHOOL in the USA…is a scam.

Fossil Fuels

So why are we using them?

I must have been young since I was still kicking my little brother around, when I saw an ad in a kid’s catalog. It was for a hydroplane machine that would convert any household vacuum cleaner into a little hydrofoil (the actual name at the time) that you could ride around your house on. Of course, it could only hold a small amount of weight, and good luck using it for two weeks before it fell apart and your parent got mad at you for destroying their vacuum cleaner. However, there was something interesting about the idea.

Why had something so simple, that could be had for what must have been about five dollars in the 1980’s, allow me to just hover around my own house? Sure, I was just six or seven, but maybe sixty or seventy pounds, and I loved it. The joy was there. The fun was there. The UTILITY…the RESOURCE…I needed from it was there. I was moving from one place to another. It lasted for two weeks, and sure it busted the vacuum cleaner quickly, but who cared, that was not the point. The point was that I was having fun and the company that shipped me the four or five little parts and instructions was probably making big margins. That was my first lesson in big oil.

In the 2000’s there was this thing called the ethanol race. Companies around the world were fighting to turn all these different kinds of biofuels into something better than gasoline. They thought they could charge more, while convincing the global public that it was safer for the environment. However, there were two huge challenges. One, almost every single biofuel was destroying an important food source like corn or an algae that more advanced species lived off, which WE in turn lived off of. Two, electric cars were suddenly in the mix. So, we had this massive competition happening, all while the finance companies of the world were trying to invest in it properly, aka guess. No one knew which was better. Gas had been used for so long, it was a complete toss up!

So, the big banks of the world started getting desperate. They decided to take riskier and riskier bets in order to invest in the energy source guessing game that they thought would replace oil for all the cars people were going to use, plus suddenly you also had technology improvements making this competition faster. There had been competitive resource races before, but not with the Internet suddenly making most developed nations around the world either in the race or trying to GET into it. The fun was just starting.

Well, rather than rehash what has happened over the last ten years, I am going to point out the illusions of the entire situation. First, ethanol and water and steam and wood were able to power every car on Earth over 100 years ago. The only reason it was decided oil was the trick was that there were just more participants. More countries could be a part of the shell game. Oil could be found all over the place. You could get it in Australia, Russia, the USA, Saudi Arabia, Iran…Brazil…fucking everywhere. So, the leaders of the biggest countries on Earth, which would later become the United Nations and OPEC and all those fun big gun toting behemoths, decided oil would be the key to the shell game. They would form a network between themselves that would keep the smaller guys at bay. It was not that there were not better options many years ago, even almost 200 years ago when guys like Tesla and Edison were making GOOD electric cars…but this time around, the big guys could just beat up the smaller guys harder and faster and keep the pummeling, through the pumping, going on and on…and on.

Government Leaders

So, you walk into your voting booth, slide the curtain, or twist the knob, or push the button, whatever you want to put in that phrase. Something happens. Then boom…in a few days there some random person running your municipality.

Well, unfortunately, this not nearly how the system works. The system is so rigged it is disgusting to most of the adults in the country who know what is going on.

Have you heard of a place called Broward County Florida? Well, Broward County Florida has an organized system of corruption built to swing the entire state of Florida for the Republican party during absolutely every presidential race. The younger folks who read this book may not know that if Broward County Florida did not exist, and its notorious CHAD system, then George W. Bush would have lost the 2000 Presidential Race to Al Gore.

Why is the US system of politics so corrupt and disgusting? Well, because in the history of the world no country has ever figured out a way to keep a human being from wanting more power or money once they get on a track to figuring out how to achieve it. If you are a man or woman, and you figure out the formula, well then suddenly there is a part of your brain that chases down that goal until you find yourself in a pine box.

There was a man named Abraham Lincoln, who somehow could feel himself being pulled in so many directions, that he would literally be agonizing over what decisions to make during the Civil War. He would have meetings, during which he would scream and rant. He would pace at night. His wife would have enormous bouts of depression. But the reason for all of this was because he was trying to stay balanced President in a country where the politics are enormously corrupt. But that is the problem. There has never been a fair system.

During the time of Julius Caesar, it seemed like the world might finally have a leader who could lead in all ways necessary to make his country strong and prosperous, while not kowtowing to either the liberal side of his political base or the conservative side. This system worked for several years, except as Caesar got more and more powerful, his senators became both jealous of this power and wary of what it could lead to. They were worried that eventually none of them could be him, and that at any given point he could have enough power to just have any of them killed at will with no chance of retribution from the public. So, one night they set a trap for him and killed him themselves.

Do you wonder why once public leaders start using other people’s money for their own interests, the lines get a little blurry? It is easy to see why. Free is…well…free. Free limos. Free food. Free ass-kissing. You get all of it. Until you are no longer useful. Then it is back on the farm with the horses and the pigs. No money, no limos, no champagne.

And that is why, people will do absolutely anything to get in office and stay there if they can, climbing until they lose or until they get tossed out for an indiscretion.

Healthcare Systems

What do you think you are paying for?

When I was a child, my mom and dad were not affluent. My mother and father, while having college degrees, did not live in a luxury house, did not drive fancy cars, and did not buy objects of opulence. When me and my younger brother had the sniffles, or had an earache, or broke a bone, or even when my brother needed surgery for a hernia he had literally at the age of three or four, they paid the doctor.

The reason we now have the type of economics we have regarding healthcare is something called an insurance company.

During high school I went to school with a very intelligent guy. He is now the top engineering vice president at Oracle, which is the top database company in the world, headed by the wealthiest man in California, Larry Ellison. Larry Ellison, Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs all started their computer careers at the same company, MIPS, who made the first consumer computer, which really just allowed tech guys to flip some switches which affected a light array, but we all loved it because it costs 100 and we could do it at home.

While me and my friend were in high school, his father, who was a gynecologist, told my friend over and over not to go into medicine. His father, during his career, had made lots of money. My friend lived in a nice house, his parents drove luxury cars, and they did whatever they wanted, plus they had a pool which I did not have. But his father told him to run from the medical field as if it was chasing him with a flaming torch. So, my friend did. It did not hurt that he liked computers, but he followed his father’s advice. His father provided this advice because during his career he had already experienced how the medical field was beginning to get encroached by the insurance companies. Why? Opportunity.

The insurance companies began to see that if they could convince big organizations like banks and governments, that they could save them costs by taking groups of doctors, and negotiating better prices through more efficient patient acquisition, then once they had them lined up, stopping the system would be impossible. What has now occurred in America? Either we have almost every single person who is middle class or lower that actually HAS healthcare only able to receive it through some form of insurance arrangement through their employer, whether it be a big organization or government or a small one, or they just do not have it all. What happens if you do not have healthcare insurance and suddenly you need something critical? Either to keep you alive or to keep you from experiencing extreme pain? Well, you either die or you live in extreme pain.

The problem with this system is that it completely wipes away the concept of free choice. If you want a different system than the one that is already arranged through your employer, then you are out of luck. Your only option is to say a prayer, or bite the bullet, as harsh as that sounds. But people do both. I have known both, and neither seems to work particularly well as you might guess.

What is the solution? Well, in America, since now most experts believe we need to give the government FORTY PERCENT of our money…we hope they will begin to split the connection between insurance companies and the medical community. After all, what started as something that looked good to the doctors, now looks terrible for the country. Plus, if you talk to many surgeons, specialists, nurses…they will tell you they got a raw deal.

After all, when was the last time you signed up for an insurance policy, something happened, you made a claim, and then they gave you the amount of money you actually needed to cover the cost of the liability? Or, to put it more blatantly, sometimes when you sign up for an insurance policy, such as a life insurance policy, do you even really care when the check arrives? You spent decades paying all that money, then your wife dies. Do you really care?

Most of it is a scam that we cannot escape.

Investing

Who do you think truly owns any company?

Once upon a time, a million years ago, a store was arranged as so: a man, or woman, walked to a pond, collected some fish, then handed five to their friends/strangers and kept one for themselves. That was considered business. Why? Because they served a core purpose of the community. Thy were the fisherman. Their pay was the concept that the people who received the fish, did not try to kill them to get the fish they kept for themselves. Hence, they ended the day as someone with food in their mouths, and good standing within whatever social circle they operated in, aka tribe/village.

Now we have something different. I say it is different because the concept of business has morphed. It has become a gift, a trick, a con. Lots of businesses are old coins, like banking, where interest rates and fees are constantly played with so clients and other associates cannot keep up with the constant math tricks, or they are deep, deep, deep cons, like the oil industry, as if solar power or organic fuel has not been possible and preferable for the environment for centuries now, and quite possible as well. But here we are, in 2019, and most cars and planes and anything that moves quickly from Point A to Point B requires fuel drilled from the earth, which is incredibly damaging, but incredibly profitable.

I have had a very damaging illness for quite a while, called bipolar disorder. As a child I had one set of medications. Then I was switched to another. Then I was switched to another. Why? Well, there is no true proof, but over the past 27 years I have noticed one obvious thing about this experience. The number of pills I must take has gone up, their cost has gone up, and their effectiveness has gone down. So now we have centered on the two main cons in the USA because they are the ones most worth talking about, big oil and big pharma and the investing behind them.

What do you do when you want to start a new oil company? Well, you collect money. You run around the globe, telling sheiks and captains of industry that you have a great new idea for how to create energy, whether it be some new battery or some new drilling techniques like fracking, or maybe a way to just transport something we already have, like transporting natural gas by boat once it has been liquefied and then sending it around the world so poor countries can benefit from your product. Then, after this process and your company is complete and successful, you and your investors will reap incredible profits. Well, here is where the con, the trick, the rub is revealed. There is one single and solitary investor behind all of this, and it is not even the founder of the company, or the investors who have put out the millions or billions to get all of this running, and this is who it is.

It is the bank. It is the investment bank who has simply accepted the paperwork, scanned it or had its AI scan it, done a few algorithms, and declared that the creation of the company and mix of investors and the product it would pump out, was worth the risk to the bank just to process the transaction. Now, you would think that 9 times out of 10, the bank says, oh, of course, our server closet (they aren’t using actual people anymore) agrees this brilliant and proven founder and leadership team has a great idea and we should process the transaction. But, sadly, that is not how it works. If the investment bank decides this idea is junk, the investment never occurs, the company never occurs, the money never changes hands, the founder goes back to the drawing board, and absolutely nothing happens.

Jobs

“Oh, Johnny, you better work really hard in kindergarten. Memorize your A’s, B’s, and C’s. So, when you can get to be big and tall like your father, you can earn a good salary at a nice, steady, job!” That is cliché, right? It is an actual quite out of MY econ book from when I was a younger kid. I know that in some of what I have been writing about in these economics books has been eye-popping, or liver-gouging, maybe something you have never thought about before, but boy, the illusion of the powerful job has never changed. It has not changed since the first bigger man told the first smaller man to carry the heavier rock down to the quarry.

Listen guys, I wish I could tell you there really were jobs, but there are not. There is a hierarchy. That hierarchy is interesting if you delve into it. You know, the young college grad picks up some bucks, goes in 8 to 5, eventually gets to management, and eventually runs the company. So, there ya go, if that was what you wanted to hear, that was what you got. Incidentally, this story really has been peddled for…thousands of years. So, let us just throw it in the garbage can with the rest.

Okay, the only thing that will ever separate you from the man making more money than you, is your ability to play a game called row-sham-bow better than him. You must have more courage. You must be willing to stick your neck out, hit the bricks kid or you’re fired, or maybe get into a street fight with baseball bats, or nothing….if you really want to make more money than any other person on Earth. We can all do the same thing. This concept that doctors make the most, then lawyers, then everyone else…complete bullshit. The guys that make the most are the ones who just steal it. Now since we are in the year of 2019, let us call it outmaneuvering the competition.

So in today’s world, since I essentially live in something I have called the wasteland of what we thought would be Silicon Valley North (Sacramento), I am going to give you a little lesson on the wonderful game of Row-Sham-Bow.

There once were three kids. They were all walking down the sidewalk to the bus. One was named Kyle, one was named Eric, and one was named Kenny. Like every single kid on the face of the planet is well aware, some kids are born with money, some kids are born with the ability to kick the shit out of other kids, and some kids are fucked and get destroyed all the days of their lives. Well, in my scenario, Kyle has money, Eric is the bully, and Kenny gets hits by a lightning bolt everyday which sets him on fire then he subsequently dies.

One day these three kids decide that each one wants to make some money. They get together and arrange a business structure. Kyle will sweet talk the new customers. Eric will collect the money from the kids who are not paying fast enough. Kenny will do all the shitty work like move a rock from one side of the yard to the next till he gets hit by a lightning bolt, ignites, and dies. Well, the interesting thing about the story is that this is exactly how the profiles for every single worker in every single business operates.

There is the kid who can talk, the kid who can punch, and the kid who grinds. Now, some kids can do one, two, three, or none. Obviously the more of them you can have the ability to do, the better off you are, but if you can do none…well…

Good luck guys. This is a tough world.

Military

In the Wild West of the United States, during the 1800’s and 1900’s, it was standard for men to travel with a sidearm displayed. It was there so everyone would know they were protected. It was there so they would know they were protected. It may carry six bullets. If you had two guns, well then you had twelve bullets. If you shot well, and a group of bandits attacked you while you were riding through a canyon, you may come out alive. If you did not shoot well, or you did not have enough bullets, or maybe a stray arrow hit you through the neck, well then you were dead. End of story.

Well, now we have these things in the world called the industrialized military systems. That means we have corporations whose sole purposes are to support war. We have government contractors whose sole purpose is to move the weapons around the world. Then we have the politicians who decide when to buy and when to sell. Then we have the soldiers who are hired to fight in these wars. Then we have the citizens who get caught in the crossfire. Everything has become a little more complicated. Why? Well, I will explain.

In a man’s eye, if he is walking down a path, any man that is walking in his direction is a possible threat. So, he does not look down, lest he look like a coward. He does not look away, lest he lose track of where this other man is. He does not look into the sky, lest he lose track of the forward progress he must make to his next meal ticket. So, he is forced to at least “pass” this other man. Now the problem is, this other man is “forced” to run all these same “mental checks”.

So ever since the advent of two men on the same path in different directions, we have had these mental checks happening. Unfortunately, sometimes as our human brain developed, we were unable to make the calculations needed to avoid what would be considered “conflict” to women, but “normal” to men. The men may have a discussion. Then maybe that might become a heated argument. Then they may have a fistfight. Then the fistfight may end up in the other man getting knocked unconscious…or getting killed. The winner of the fight would almost always plunder whatever the dead man …or if the loser is lucky, unconscious, man…might have in his pockets. Then he would move on.

But as history moved forward, and as guys discovered more fun and cool ways to kill each other (and we do enjoy it), the groupings (or countries if you actually want to consider this mess we now have civilized) suddenly had things like hypersonic nuclear weapons that can move across an ocean in minutes and wipe out portions of a continent. Now why do we have this?

Because one man wanted what another man had and he was not patient enough, or courageous enough, or name or your adjective, to get it on his own merit.

Blow it out your ass God, because every single country since the Dawn of Time has used you as the scapegoat for this bullshit.

Pensions

In many parts of the USA, there are coveted financial instruments called pensions. Most people think of them in the realm of the armed services, or government work. However, they can encounter other different realms like education, or possibly a family trust structure. Whatever a pension might be, what it really is, is an instrument that pays a nominal amount of income, with a nominal growth rate, while the organization that has issued the pension, is essentially making money on the con. The organization is using either someone called an actuary, or a team of actuaries, or just an actuarial system, or some other mathematical equation, to guarantee that the money they are giving you is benefiting you much less than the organization.

The people who usually get involved in these pensions are people who feel they are not able to produce in other parts of the more competitive marketplace. They feel that working for a pension system is a good idea since they cannot compete.  When they are old and maybe on their deathbed, at least they will have clean water and a loaf of bread. Well, unfortunately that is not true in the slightest.

It has been proven, and can be turned up with easy research, that many organizations just cut pension benefits in half, or wipe them out completely! Oh, you thought working for us was a fantastic idea because at the end of your life or maybe in the last twenty years you might get a pension that may even keep pace with the growth of the competitive marketplace? No. Sorry. You were completely and totally incorrect. Let me show you a very stark example so you will appreciate quote how bad this can be and how it can devastate even the most important people in the USA, let alone people stuck in pension systems around the world.

There was once a black person who joined the army as a youth. I use that adjective because the entire world came from Africa, so any current colloquial term that may make his skin color or shade seem different or better or worse…simply is not the best way to describe him. He came from the inner city but tried hard in school and excelled in sports. However, when he went looking for college scholarships or possibly other groups that might help him improve his overall earning power, instead of just being a high school graduate, he joined the American military, the finest fighting force in the world. He was sure that if he signed up for a twenty-year tour, he would be provided a pension that would assure him a comfortable senior living arrangement. Plus, he was not so against the idea of travelling a little, maybe getting in a skirmish or two if need be. That was just the kind of gentleman he was. Well, here is what happened to him.

He had a very docile trip through the military. He never went overseas because during his serving time there was no big war going on anywhere in the world that the US was drawn into. Even if there had been, his post during most of his time was at a training base right here stateside, where he spent a good bit of time as a drill sergeant, and then finished his time with the military as a lieutenant. He was proud of his achievement. The twenty years were over. Somehow, he had never gotten married, although like most men he had a romance or two, or three, or four. But he knew he had his pension. He was now somewhere in his late forties, and he knew he had his pension. So, he started a second career. Now the second career is not of particular meaning in this story, but what the US military did regarding his pension from his first career is.

He received a letter about five years into his second career, that the military had decided to redistribute money in its budget. It had decided that, due to a white house administration change, the military branch he had been a part of, needed some of that pension money to go toward more important things. Why? Well, now a big important war had broken out! They needed HALF of his monthly pension check to go toward buying guns and tanks and missiles for this new and intensely important war, that if not fought, would destroy the planet itself.

The gentleman in question, who had promised that twenty years of his life to the military 25 years ago, at a young age, expecting those numbers to be exactly what they were promised to be, was devastated. He no longer could afford a house. He no longer could afford a reliable car. His life was completely different, and always would be. Why? The military had no reason to give that pension money back. Most often in this world, once the money has been pulled out of your hands, either through your own mistakes or just through the strong arming or theft of another person or entity, do you ever get it back?

Unfortunately, that US veteran had learned the hard way that pensions are a sucker’s bet. If you expect them to be what they are supposed to be thirty years later, and they are always designed that way, do not expect that promise to be set in cement.

Real Estate

Come one, come all! Buy some land! It always goes up! It is the best investment there has ever been! Enjoy this wonderful mortgage that you pay until you die, then possibly, if you are lucky, your offspring get stuck paying it!

Or sometimes the schtick goes like that, like in a seminar or pamphlet: “The best way to create wealth at a rapid pace in today’s market is to buy rental properties with the bank’s money. Then we will teach you everything you need to know!” Boy, the real estate cons just go on, and on, and on.

The reality is that life is fraught with peril, and the real estate market gets hit with the same massive ups and downs as the rest of the illusionary investment market. The middlemen make all the money, while the folks who are putting out their hard-earned greenbacks get stuck holding their destroyed futures in their hands when the market goes south, which it always does, almost on a schedule.

In the news we are pounded with stories of these real estate titans, who have timed the market, and either built large real estate fortunes, or constructed these enormous buildings, completely through their own ingenuity, or through the creation of a team of brilliant people who knew exactly what to do at every turn. Unfortunately, this entire story is lies, and these people are taking the same whacks when the market turns as the rest of us are. No one is really leap-frogging the market when things get bad. Do you really think there are rich people in the world that have done it without massive cheating? No. What they have done is something called selective opportunity usage.

If you see a piece of real estate, and you have a history with real estate, meaning you were a broker for a while, or maybe your family has a background in it, you possibly have a better chance than the average person in the market of buying the land or house or building, maybe fixing it up a little, then renting or leasing it out, or just letting it sit there as the market in that area improves compared to what it cost you to acquire it, or you just sell it outright soon after. Now this sort of information is no mystery. The mystery is the following.

When you own a piece of real estate, unlike stocks, bonds, and certificates of deposit at a bank, you may suddenly need instant cash to deal with a dangerous cost. Now when I say dangerous, I mean a cost that overwhelms what you were expecting might happen. How much? Well, that just depends on the ratio. Did you buy a $1 million dollar building, and only put $10k down on it, then leased out several parts of the building? Well, that may cover your cost, and you start to get some regular return, but unfortunately, it is discovered that the entire AC system (air conditioning system) for the building is faulty. The city you purchased the building in has given you a deadline to fix the system by, or else you must return this building, and every dime you invested into it, to the credit that provided the financing. The AC fixture process is enormous, let’s say $200k. Well, what do you do now? Depending on what your personal or corporate bottom line is, you could have just taken a bit hit, or possibly even gone bankrupt. This sort of thing happens every day. Most people who grow up believing that real estate is a good idea are fed the lie by their parents who have seen people around them do it. However, their parents have not seen their colleagues’ or friends’ or other family members’ actual financial statements regarding said pieces of property. When it all shakes out, and the numbers possibly come to light, suddenly your neighbor who was driving that Rolls Royce for maybe ten years, dies in a pine box because his family cannot afford anything else, bankrupted by his huge investments in real estate over the years.

Risk

For a millennia, maybe forever, economists have agreed that one unique metal is the safest investment on the face of the planet: gold. Why? Well, in the earlier days of the world, it was versatile. It could be used for many things, such as weapons, but also jewelry. On top of that, people, just about everybody, loved the look of it, so it was used in construction of palaces and opulent homes. Then, as engineering progressed, it was discovered that gold was an excellent conduit of electricity, so it found its way even into things like computers. But always, what has fascinated people about gold is one special thing…the lack of risk.

If you were someone who owned a large portion of gold, you were considered wealthy. Why? It meant that the value of that goal, as deemed by the entire planet, would never completely go away. You would always be able to find someone, somewhere, who would be willing to trade you your piece of gold, for something else you may want…most importantly something called food or clean water, or shelter from a devastating natural disaster like a hurricane or typhoon. So, gold became known as a safe place to store your wealth. So safe, that in mid part of the 1800’s, people all over America rushed to California because huge deposits of gold were discovered, and suddenly we had something in American history called the California Gold Rush. Individuals would risk life, limb, and their families, to get to California, all for the hope of securing possession of land with lots of gold on it, or just to stand in streams with pans, and hope to grab as many gold nuggets as they could. Banks sprung up, powered completely by this surge in wealth. This really was the beginning of California as a global financial force. The third biggest bank in the USA is Wells Fargo, founded almost completely due to the gold rush and by financing the transport of the metal over the Pacific and by ground back to the East Coast.

As the decades passed, such things as the concept of a corporation were formed, where investors would formally invest in companies, and this idea of gold as an amazing instrument of investment started to fall out of favor. Why? Well, a corporation could ask investors for its gold pieces, try to produce some product  or service that it would then market to the outside world as a whole, and then if it failed, well, depending on the structure of the corporation, the gold would be gone. People who thought their gold was rock solid (pardon the pun), had absolutely nothing a few years later. They began to realize that maybe there really was a risk, even in something like gold. But gold had been the standard of success since the dawn of man, what had happened?

People have always had an issue with this simple concept: risk. As little babies, we do not understand that the only thing keeping us from shriveling up and dying is our mother’s breast and the air in our lungs, until both, in tandem, are removed from us. As toddlers, at least for a little while, we do not know that if we step into traffic, we will be run over by that automobile or motorcycle, or maybe even a fast-moving bicycle. But the older we get, the more we come to understand, that at any given moment, something called risk is at play in every single situation.

In the 1960’s, gold had once again found favor as two very scary world wars had many highly developed nations thinking things like banks and governments might turn on them in a flash. The Axis and the Allies had fought tooth and nail, and millions of lives had been lost, but not a single soul could really understand why. So, suddenly you saw families doing things like burying gold coins in chests in their yards. You saw things like nuclear bomb shelters being created underneath homes, as the Cold War ravaged the tensions between the two superpowers, the now very powerful USA and a communist nation, Russia, at that time called the USSR, the United Soviet Socialist Republics. These were the two nations who had come out of World War II as the most powerful. Why? Each one possessed the ability to create and deploy a nuclear bomb, like the two the USA dropped on the Axis power Japan that ended World War II. However, most historians do not completely explain how even though Russia was extremely different than the USA in many ways, without Russia, the Axis powers very easily could have won. Without the hardy fighting and strategic dual going on in the Eastern side of the globe, between Germany and Russia, Germany and the other Axis powers which included Japan and Italy, could have won World War II.

So now people became confused. They had different choices for how to consider risk: conservative, like gold was for quite a while, never losing value, or something like stocks in a corporation or bonds in a government. Bonds were investments with a set value and are still used by many people who do not want the risk of stocks or the changing value of gold. When you buy a bond, the government you buy it from provides a fixed return over a certain time period. So now we have three popular representations of risk: gold, which was considered perfect forever, then other options became available; stocks, where everything could be lost instantly; or bonds, where if you thought somewhere in between, maybe you could sleep at night, or at least feel better about having food on the table the next day.

Well, let me put all that to rest for you. I ask you to consider the following proposition. If you have 100 pounds of gold, or 100 million dollars’ worth of stock, or 100 million dollars’ worth of bonds in your portfolio, which is best? Okay, for the sake of debate, let’s say you pick one third of each, so you can be safest. Now, let’s take it one step further, you have this incredible portfolio, full of 100 million dollars, and let’s wipe the dollars, let’s say bitcoin now that it is 2019. Let’s say it is 100 million bitcoin worth of gold/stock/bonds. So, you have the best portfolio possible. After all, who needs more than 100 million dollars, correct? Well, let’s take it one step further. Let’s say suddenly an innovation occurs, and 100 robotics companies announce that human beings will now live forever. You must be excited about that, right? Well, there is a little bit of a problem with that.

Every single human being on the planet…has always had the choice…to try to live as long as possible…or to just end it all. So, the concept that the money in your bank account somehow controls the risk in your life, well guys, I am afraid that is just a sales tactic used by bankers and people who want investors.

Solar Power

Notice to world: solar power is old!

I love how as we walk down the sidewalk, and see a few Teslas, we are just blown out of the water by the incredible technology and the dynamic brain power it must have taken to put electricity from the sun into the battery of a car. How amazing, how incredible…how old.

Once upon a time there was a man named Nikola Tesla. He would just sit around in his lab, studying, creating electric coil machines no one else on the planet could think of, and trying to figure out a way to get actual electric POWER to WIRELESSLY cross the Atlantic. He wanted a tower in New York City to hit a tower in London and boom, the whole city of London would power up. Funny, what an amazing idea, right? Have you heard of it before? Well, maybe not, even though it happened over 150 years ago.

That was because at the time there was an intellectual power war going on in the United States between many different companies and brilliant scientists, including Edison. Well, Mister Edison had a certain penchant for something…money. He wanted to make a tower of THAT! While Tesla was into something we now called public domain information, aka free information like you would find in a library. Mister Edison was more into IP…intellectual property. Something he could license, sell to the world, and then sit on a pile of the profits created from it. So, that sets the landscape for today’s power war.

As you can see many different companies fire up battery factories around the planet, and integrate their technology into cars, homes, computers, teddy bears…we begin to wonder…why not earlier? Why did none of this happen earlier? It is such a simple idea. The sun…makes a wheel run. Well I will explain.

In economics we have a concept called resources. I know, complicated right? If you can control the resources, then you control the game…the game of economics. If you are a steel baron like Andrew Carnegie from the late 1800’s, and you can make the best steel for the cheapest price, you control the best building resource in the world, so he was able to control the building game, although he did not particularly abuse it. If you are a man like William Randolph Hearst and you control the wood mills in the central Northwest of the USA, you can control the paper industry because paper is made from wood. Hence Hearst was able to suddenly begin buying things like newspaper companies because he was able to say: “Guess what, if you don’t pay my asking price, I will give a cheaper price to your competitor and he will then control the newspaper game in your market and you will be driven out of business!” In fact, Hearst was such a colossal bad guy, that he would even set policy at newspaper companies, deciding the types of people that got hired and fired, and which political candidates the newspapers would endorse. Quite the hero.

Now the inherent issue that this planet, and let’s just keep the discussion to this planet for today, if you do not mind, is that the sun does not seem to run out. We are going to have as much solar energy as we want if we want it. But, look at what is now happening in the last few years. We are getting interested (note the sarcasm in my typing) that certain things will block out the sun, like greenhouse gases, and other things. We have even been told by people we are expected to believe are credible scientists that cow farts and cow manure create too much methane, and hence will eventually cloud the Earth’s atmosphere, block out the rays of the sun, and kill all of us because our planet’s basic ecosystem depends on it. Well, folks, if you have picked up this book, I know you have figured out that just is not true.

As you begin to read more and more about solar power in the world and think about it in relation to your own life, and maybe a house and car, just remember it is nothing new. This thing in the sky will burn forever. At least as long as we need it to.

Tax-Exempt Organizations

Why does church exist, at least in the United States? And most likely other states? Tax breaks. As in, essentially none.

The government looks at churches, assuming it is not a dangerous cult where military personnel has to be sent in to keep kids from being raped in public, as a way to assuage the public conscience. People go in, they come out somehow feeling a little bit better, hopefully. Then on Monday they head into their corporate gig that they usually hate, and somehow that week they can put in their forty hours as they whisper one prayer after another. People are somehow able to get through life this way. Now the type of religion may differ, but this is the system.

Since we are talking economics, this is the break the churches get. It is like credit unions. They both get a HUGE tax break because they are deemed to be services the public needs. The history behind both is quite interesting.

Churches have been around since the time of a man named Zoroaster who ran a huge church in the middle east. People would come, enjoy his song and dance, and then drop a farthing in a bucket on their way out. Over his short lifetime, he amassed quite a following, eventually dominating the middle eastern church circuit as I am going to call it. He is what you would call the “beginning of one god religion”. People love to say that everything came from Abraham. Nope, everything came from Zoroaster. Look it up.

Credit unions are in another group. Credit unions were started in the 1920’s in the United States because places like farms just did not have the financial power or collateral to do what the country needed. So, some enterprising people decided that in the states the government would arrange a different classification of financing institution. One that would have much less taxation by the government but would also not have the vast array of resources like a bank would have, which would have to fight for its customers. Credit unions would usually have things like military membership requirements, government employment requirements, but now all of that is typically gone. Usually what you will find now are credit unions that are the same as banks, but with the tax breaks, or credit unions that are there for the educational fields.

While I would love to claim that credit unions are the brilliant brainchild of the USA, they are not. The concept is an old one, started somewhere in Europe hundreds of years ago, and over time it has just been adopted to suit whatever needs the current country might have, assuming there are economic leaders willing to administrate and run them, since they never produce the same type of profits as a bank does.

There is today’s lesson on public financing institutions that are not particularly competitive but are only there because any individual government has decided they serve a purpose for that country. As history has shown, if a government decides either of these types of places should go away, they do, as when Japan outlawed Islam recently because they considered that religion to be dangerous to their economy. Don’t believe me? Research it kids. I cannot do ALL the work for you.

Texas Hold'em Poker

There is a deep secret to Texas Hold’em Poker. Regardless of wherever you go, whatever tournament or table, a good portion of the people at the table already know each other and the styles of play they employ. Have you heard the cliché, that if you do not know who the sucker at the table is, it is you? Well, sometimes that is true.

I spent five years playing poker at a game started by a district attorney friend after he got back from finishing law school. Each week the “brilliant” attorneys had no idea why generally me (and usually my buddy) would walk out with all the cash. Well, we were at the game every week. Most guys were not. They would flit in and out. Maybe show up once a month. But we were there week in and week out.

The crux of poker is that it attracts all men, whether they be highly intelligent or not. People look at poker as a fast way to a tax-free paycheck, sometimes a huge paycheck. On any given corner in any large market in the USA, you can find a poker game where if you win big you walk out the door with $5K+. And I do not mean a tournament is required for that. Cash games can easily produce that. But the intelligent guys are the ones who generally clean up. Sure, there are guys who have more inherent “poker talent”, but smarter guys typically beat up on idiots. Now, of course sometimes experience comes into play, but at a table anything can happen. If you have put your mortgage payment into the pot on a showdown, and the other guy knew what you had, you are screwed regardless.

After the rules of time and space broke up the game I initially started my poker odyssey at, I played poker every morning for six months at a local native American casino with a group of very old men. I say very old because they were generally thirty to forty years older than me. The one thing they agreed on was how weird I was. They did not know how I was so good, and they also did not know how I was able to dedicate my mornings to this stupid game they were at. But I knew the secret. As I sat at this game, every single morning, every single weekday, I was learning exactly how they all played, but of course they would not be there every single day. The assortment would switch up a little, but my attendance was constant. So, I became the typical big winner.

Next time you sit down at a poker table, whether it be high stakes, low stakes, no matter the country, if you are playing in an actual casino for real money, expect this general scam to be running.

The News

There is no real reason to watch it.

I have been watching a little financial news every morning for about…twenty years. Every morning, nothing changes. What does change is something called interest rates.

The funny thing about interest is that they never really matter. They only matter unless you are buying or selling a house. So, people tend to stay locked into the news for that. But the news, as you are a young person, wants to trick you into thinking that the analyst of the DOW or the NASDAQ or the S&P 500 or some MILITARY ACTION somewhere in the world will affect your portfolio, but it never does.

Every single brainless person in the country still trudges off to work, grinds out their eight to 12-hour day, sticks their pennies in their IRAs, then comes home. So, the news has no effect on anything.

People who have extreme financial expertise, like me, watch the news a little more carefully to see if something like the airs of a recession are on the way. However, even I, who have, well, whatever I have, do not tend to care because it will not affect anything in my life. I am simply curious. That is where the news comes in. It satisfies people’s curiosity.

Most younger professionals, in their 20’s and 30’s, think actual information can be derived. Unfortunately, they are completely incorrect since all the stock analysts are just throwing darts at a board as they always have.

I genuinely wanted to believe the hype. I was maybe 33, fresh from my first finance job, and I watch a little news, expecting it to give me something useful. So, I watched for about two weeks. I quickly picked up on the fact that…wow…nothing there. It had no effect on anything. It was there…to just be a placeholder in the minds of people who did not understand how finance worked.

So, I switched the dial off, and just moved on.

It is too bad that even information that is labelled as important has become an illusion, but it has. If you get a good analysis on any given day, you have struck gold. Now I do see an interview here and there, maybe once a month, that I say, “How about that, that was worth watching.” But that is once a month. And typically, I have better ways to spend my time. Plus, I am not in the business of building a stack of cash to the sky. Most people are.

I think that is funny too. That stack of cash to the sky? Maybe they do not realize the sky cannot be reached by something as flimsy as currency printed through governments that can be toppled in a moment’s notice, including our own.