SWB: Alan B. Rowley II - Success Coach - ECoaching - Email Coaching

What's Up With Success Warrior?

He's still working, exercising, kenpo-ing, exercising, coaching, exercising, eating right, exercising, and trying to get enough sleep.

What this is going to mean for now is a scaling back on blogging.  Scaling back meaning dropping the SWB blog for a while and aiming for a post a day for Chronicles.

Chronicles will still, uh, chronicle my fitness journey and the other days will likely be a mish-mash of topics.  What ever strikes my fancy for the day and probably covering several things per post like the Snippet Saturday posts.

Today, Tia and I are going to the city to see if we can help pull this country out of the recession by buying birthday presents for Trey. 

No, we didn't get our "rebate" from King George yet.  We won't be using that to help with the recession.  That's going toward paying off my car.  Other than the mortgage, we should be debt free in June.  July at the latest.

Speaking of the mortgage, I called my credit union to see what kind of rate I could get on a refi*.  Not a whole lot better than what I have now.  What the hell?  Uncle Ben is selling fiat money at bargain basement prices.  You'd think my credit union could pass some of that savings on to me.

Tomorrow, I'll update my P90X Journal and maybe on Friday I'll have an interesting story from today's little outing.  It seems like something funny or interesting happens when we go into town.  I think the reason for that is the fact that I don't get out much so anything beyond my front lawn is interesting or humorous.

Have a great day!

More proof that I don't understand the stock market

I check the headlines just about every day and I really should be recording my thoughts each day about what I see.  Things seem busy for me now so I'm lucky when I can a blog post done.

I couldn't let this one pass though.

Stocks are up because people are spending more money.

Why are they spending more money?  Everything costs more.  Inflation is forcing people to pay more for things they have to buy.  Trivial things like food.

I read an article quite a while back that stated that the Fed is always trying to create *some* inflation.  They always want costs going up so that businesses think they are making more money.  Seems stupid to me but there it is.

Anyway, that theory has kicked into overdrive with the current inflation rates.  Companies are bound to see record sales in dollar amounts because the dollar is worth less.  The whole thing seems like a game to me and the people being hurt by it are the ones that can't afford to play.

Speaking of which, I was just paid 68 cents in dividends on my stocks.  Watch out Buffet, I'm on my way.

Christians Destroyed the Economy

I'm not jumping on the blame wagon.  If I did, it would be to point out something in an effort that we wouldn't repeat the mistake again. 

You would think that maybe, somewhere in this mess, there was a lesson or two that could be learned.  Maybe banks shouldn't loan money to people who can't pay them back.  Maybe artificially raising the prices of houses and then borrowing the fake equity was a bad move.  Maybe people shouldn't borrow money they can't pay back.  Maybe people shouldn't live paycheck to paycheck promising away all their money in the form of installment payments.  Maybe Wall Street shouldn't take these worthless debts and bundle them up to conceal their worthlessness and sell them off.  Maybe the Fed shouldn't bail out people who did all these unethical actions.

You know?  Somewhere in there, there must be a lesson. 

You know what though?  Knowing what we know now, would we do it again?  Hell, yeah, we would.  It would be a more pronounced spike but it would still happen.  People would get in on the game sooner and try to get out before everything fell apart.

Congressional Law versus Economic Law

Congress and democratic presidential candidates seem to be discussing a minimum gas mileage law quite a bit.  We need to conserve gas and cut down on global warming causing emissions. 

I know I'm more laid back than most but I don't see the need to pass such a law.  It has seemed to me to be quite obvious that the problem will solve itself.  Oil is on the decline which means prices are on an incline.  Americans have put themselves into debt to such a point that no matter how much money they make, they are living from paycheck to paycheck.

That means that when gas prices hit $4 a gallon, $5 a gallon, and on upward, people are going to start voluntarily ditching gas guzzling vehicles.  If Congress wants to speed up the process, don't tell people what kind of cars they are allowed to make or buy, just add a sin tax onto gas.  Raise the price of gas and you will see fuel economic car sales go through the roof.

I know, we want our cake, our frosting, a scoop of Neapolitan ice cream, on fine china, with a glass of milk, and be able to eat it too.  Like your mom always said though, if you keep touching it, you're going to go blind.  The more we try to make laws to force people to do what someone has deemed is "right" the more we have to make laws enforcement agencies and even more rules and regulations and in the end, the whole thing just backfires anyway.

Not that this is good for the employees but GM is laying off 3,500 people who were making trucks and SUVs.  Sales are decreasing as gas prices increase.  People are switching to cross-overs.  Maybe those people can get jobs building cool cross-overs or maybe they'll have to switch industries to what ever market will rise with the decline of car sales.

Walking shoes?

Unfortunately, our monkey-spanking government has created tax incentives for companies to move out of the country and preferred free trade agreements that benefit workers in foreign countries.

We could stop the whole thing if we would buy American but we want our companies to pay American taxes and high salaries to people so they can buy the cheapest crap on the planet that was built in Taiwan from Wal-Mart. 

To conserve gas and cut down on deadly emissions, we should pass a law that people aren't allowed to buy stuff that has to travel more than 1,000 miles to get to the retailer.

Ron Paul, Nevada, and the Country

I've tried to block out the treatment of Ron Paul and the American people by the corporations and the media companies as best I could.  This whole Nevada delegate election thing has brought it all back home for me.  We have lost control of our country.  The whole system is just a big hoax to make people think that they have some say in what happens but they don't.

Hillary, McCain, Obama.  Who cares?  The outcome will be the same.  If that weren't the case, they wouldn't be in the news.  Only the the candidates who have been bought and paid for make the Old Stream Media and most Americans still get there news in that fashion.

They can't be bothered to actually learn anything.  Part of the equation is the fact that they have to work longer and harder to make ends meet and so they have little time for actual learning.  Part of it is just laziness. 

Ron Paul doesn't take money from lobbyists so it's impossible for him to become president.  That is incredibly sad to me.  Having Ron Paul as president might not have changed much anyway.  After all, Congress has been bought and so there is little that he could have done but he could have educated America.  The media ignores him now even though he's still running to get the Republican nomination but if he was president, they would be expected to be there with cameras and microphones to broadcast what he said.

Now they can ignore him and instead we get to watch the pseudo-election process for the next president picked by world corporations and the CFR.

I'm still voting for Ron Paul if I have to write his name on the Diebold machine with white-out.  I still believe that you don't earn the right to complain about the idiot in office unless you vote.  When the country collapses into violent chaos, I'll have earned the right to blog about it.

What is Plan B if Ron Paul wins?

Nevada was supposed to pick it's state delegates last Saturday.  They were *supposed to* but they didn't because it was apparent that Ron Paul was going to win.

Yes, for those of you that get your news from the 3 letter boys, Ron Paul is still running to get the Republican nomination and he's going to win Nevada unless the Republican party can find a way to keep Ron Paul people out of the election process.

Saturday, in Reno, they started the process of electing state delegates.  In the first Congressional District voting, Ron Paul won 7 of 9 delegates.  Seeing this as a sign of how the rest of the voting would go for the day, the Republican party put the process into recess and said they would start over in a few days in Las Vegas (500-600 miles away to make it more inconvenient).

So, the people in charge of the Republican party (because it's obviously not the people in the part) have stalled to see what they can come up with to somehow keep the people from voting for who they want. 

You have to love democracy.

Article

PS - Don't you love that for an article about Ron Paul, they used a picture of Mitt Romney with a caption about McCain? 

Celebrating Being a Billionaire

Mikhail Prokhorov, Russian multi-billionaire (in the neighborhood of $22 billion), has decided to create a magazine aimed at billionaires and people who want to be billionaires.  The title of the magazine will be "Snob".

There's nothing wrong with being a billionaire.  In fact, I may give it a try sometime just to see what it's like.  The magazine name seems to give it a negative connotation though.

The timing of which could be very poor or maybe the timing is right, depending on who you are.  We are entering a time when many people may have less than they had a couple years ago.  This might be the best time to be a billionaire.

"It's not pleasant to boast about your wealth when you have inherited it but when you have made it yourself, well it is still not very nice, but it is justified," Shmarov said [who will be running Snob].

When you've got it, flaunt it?

Midweek Filler: Money Makes the World Go 'Round

I have never seen the movie that this week's video comes from but my dad must have had the soundtrack because I've heard the songs.

They Just Don't Get It

This news team is interviewing this guy because he's an expert.  He knows what he talking about.  They admit that he's been right in the past.  And yet . . .

Listen to them argue with him.  Smacktards.

Stocks are on their way up. Woo hoo!

Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist and chairman of the investment policy committee at Standard & Poor's, has declared that the worst is over for stocks for the year.  It's upward and onward from here.

The Federal Reserve's rate cuts and King George's generous tax rebates have saved the day.

If you pulled your money out trying to play it safe, now is the time to throw it all back in so that you can come out a winner at the end of the year. 

Whadya wanna bet that another investment firm goes under in May when no one believes the crap that Sam is shoveling?