Tags: Finance Bangladesh to America, Improving Corporation Behavior Benefits All, CEO Run Governments Makes Us Poorer, Giving Power to People Great Dividends and Economy
Instead of building Coca Cola or Power plants which employ a few people and ruin the water supply and flood lands occupied by many people, India might really subsidize extensive things like solar panels to Empower the poor.
Today President Obama announced the executive appointment of Elizabeth Warren to run the consumer advocate agency to keep a eye on the banks. Warren's march to success is a story from a Janitors daughter to Harvard Professor, Monitoring Tarp, and Now Consumer Protection Agency, would not be possible in today's economic system. Our past system before the Reagan Revolution for corporations only, allowed the same for my high school friend who also had a janitor father was accepted to Cal Tech which accepts only 200 students a year on full scholarship.
Bill's father was also able to afford buying books in advanced math and piano lessons because he was paid for what his work was worth. Today we underpay the underclass for their work and it pains me that much of the wealthy and upper middleclass also underpays the poor who take care of their children. You get what you pay for.
In corporations employees work many hours because of the fear of losing their jobs. They should know that fear stifles creativity. Now the same high school no longer has students who go to Harvard because of overcrowding and violence. Something is wrong with our current school, work, government where one party stops us from doing good for the people of our country. Gerrymandering has made it worse. That is why we must elect Democratic Governors and Senate which can make us hope again.
In which the last ten years, poverty went up sharply in the last decade under Bush where income went down 5% and poverty increased to 44 million. If we did not include the Clinton job increasing years at all levels in the 15 year assessment, the Bush Republican effect would be more clearly seen. I think it was a political move to include the good Clinton years.
Lots of very smart things as far as policies is being carried out without any publicity. Under the Republicans, government only worked for the wealthy and corporations. Because the wealthy make most of their money from investments at a 15% tax rate, their overall tax rate is less than a middleclass American. Of course hundreds of large corporations pay no taxes at all because of all the "friendly" tax subsidies provided by Bush.
With the current overflow of information in misleading soundbites on TV and skim reading everything on the Internet because we have no time to read it all, we have also become a very for forgetful nation because in order for memory to become strong, we need repetition of the right kind of information. We often cannot sort out the key things due to how we contend with this overload. Thankfully we have MSNBS's Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann at 8 PM ET and 9 PM ET and 5 PM PT and 6 PM Pt daily who do the work for us. http://rachel.msnbc.com and http://countdown.msnbc.com .
Instead of corporation taking more away from us such as jobs, our live, and money, why do they just hire CEOs such as Hurd and Fiorina formerly of HP who fired tens of thousands of good experienced workers and replaced them with inexperienced ones who are paid less, but most contribute less. Experience and hard work is required to truly be innovative. Read the "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell who gains his experience by reading widely. An empty brain no matter how smart someone is, does not create. Firing people can be done with a computer.
I remember a lot because I pay attention and am interested. A chemical reaction formed from emotions is necessary to remember. No interest results in information going in or not and fading fast from our hippocampus. The good news is that it is not necessary to know everything if we once get to a core background of information based on real information stored in our brains. Watching financial news on TV is the worst thing most investors can do unless they are able to filter out the bull-crap. I pay attention to those I trust for information, not interpretation. Just last week, most analysts made a 180 degree change about deflation.
Investing in this climate is extremely difficult, but we all need to pay attention to breaking trends, not day to day fluctuations for whatever reasons. Volatility is something you can follow on CNBC top crawl. I find it does predict the eventual change in the market a few months down the road. Try not to follow the herd up or down. The herd is now saying buy Gold, emerging markets, bonds, and treasuries. If we go back to April of this year for the ten year Treasury notes, we would have lost ten percent in value. When there is a run on bonds, the losses could be much more severe than this.
Even though I am well diversified in index funds throughout the world, I routinely go up or down ten percent in one month. Due to heavy professional investors involved in moving markets now with supercomputers and extremely fast trading in less than one second, everything happens too fast for us to really know what is going on until it is too late.
Our pre-frontal cortex ramps down our emotions so as not to panic, but when we don't know what is going on, we tend to panic more easily. Read a book or two by Bogle such as Enough: True Measures of Money, Business, and Life by John C. Bogle and Unconventional Success: A Fundamental Approach to Personal Investing by David F. Swensen, current investor for Yale University. The latter book is now expensive so try to check it out of the library. I would recommend Bogle to buy or any of his other books. He is very truthful.
Many of the projects I was picked to solved by management were in areas that I did not have expertise and too much information. I refused to read their reports of failure and just asked individuals questions and listened carefully to get the most important points. They will say much more in private than in public. That is why I abhor the typical corporate way of solving problems. People just ask questions to make points and give answers to get points.
Most of us ignore movie and television critics realizing that trying to explain the emotional experience of movies or television shows is extremely difficult. Like minded friends on Face Book or Twitter is a better source.
Even choosing spouses from an emotional base rather than an intellectual ones is something I learned after many failures. We cannot live with intellect even though it sometimes helps, but for most, an emotional compatibility is a better criteria. As Joan, my close friend and neighbor told me a few decades ago, go with your gut. That is how I choose close friends, but i missed some good picks of a spouse and partner because I relied too much on my intellect. If I don't like someone immediately, the relationship never lasts no matter how many things we like to do together. Its scary! People who rely mostly on intellect have a higher divorce rate. But I still hold to the rational view that let the relationship cool down a little before making a life-changing decision.
Jim Kawakami, Sept 17, 2010, http://jimboguy.blogspot.com
Solar Power in Bangladesh Used to Empower People in Poor, Rural Areas
In Bonn, Germany this week are representatives of the Bangladeshi organization Grameen Shakti, which makes loans and offers technical assistance to allow poor, rural people to install solar power in their homes, often granting access to electricity for the first time in their family’s history. They have helped install more than 110,000 systems, often with a woman hired to maintain the system, creating jobs, empowering women, and raising the standard of living. [includes rush transcript] http://www.democracynow.org/2010/9/17/solar_power_in_bangladesh_used_to
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