You may or may not have heard of a Community Land Trust. If so, disregard this post as you are far ahead of 99% of the population. If not, visit:
http://www.cltnetwork.org/index.htm
This is one great idea that may eventually even solve the foreclosure problem. I don’t know that for certain but it has possibilities. If you are a first time home buyer, you could just possibly benefit big time.
Worldwide food shortages are once again in the news. Britain’s prime minister even hosted a conference on the subject. It seems food prices are rising faster than oil prices and this is causing big time trouble across the globe.
The usual and customary suspects were quoted with the usual and customary bits of advice being given. I don’t know why but the West is always said to be behind any problem that exists in Africa and the remaining developing world.
Nobody ever mentions the dictatorships, Zimbabwe comes to mind, that are probably the root cause of the problem. Zimbabwe was once a food exporting nation. Today it is a food importing nation.
The why lies in one word: Mugabe. He is an irrational nut case who kills people because they are white, disagree with him or just plain feels like it.
He is just my example in this post. I could talk about the Moslem nations who use religion as their excuse for food shortages. They blame the Christians. But why belabor the point. You get the idea, right?
More food aid is being dispensed to “solve” the problem. Never mind solving the problem by forcing out the idiot politicians running the food starved nations. No sir, can’t do that.
My point is simple. Get ready to be guilted on not only global warming but the food shortage. After all, if you are white and live in the West, it has to be your fault.
As I think of monetarily favorable jobs, I will make a post. Yesterday I posted two. Today, this one.
What used to be called a gossip columnist is now titled social columnist. Social columnists, according to the people who invented the term, gather information to write about local, state, national and international social happenings and report on the actions of noteworthy public figures at these events.
You can become the Dear Abby of your hometown if you can talk your paper’s editor into giving you a column. The beauty of this job is that you get paid for writing about local events. Everybody, and I do mean everybody, likes to read about local goings on.
San Francisco had Herb Caen for example. This guy not only got paid but was a celebrity with national status. I don’t guarantee you will gain national or international notoriety but it is possible.
Write on…
Mind you, I don’t make this stuff up. I actually think it up. <lol>.
If your town is anything like mine, every street corner (or so it seems) has a person holding a cardboard sign asking for money. The signs say all kinds of things. Everything from work for food to need $2 for beer. Don’t laugh, I actually saw that one and if I didn’t have the green light I would have given him $2.
Here’s my idea. Find a busy freeway offramp or intersection and look at the businesses in the immediate vicinity. Go to the one that looks like it has the least number of customers and offer to stand at the freeway offramp or at the intersection holding an advertisement for the business for $10 - $15 an hour payable in cash at the end of your shift.
You will be doing what is already being done by those folks who swing the signs as they stand there. The difference is you will be freelancing which means you get to keep the entire paycheck. By the way, since it is already being done, you know businesses are willing to pay for this service.
Good luck.
I say offbeat but don’t really believe it is that far fetched. As you may or may not know, I live in Nevada. As you may or may not know, Nevada was the first legal gambling state in this nation.
Casinos use a form of tender called chips. These chips have denominations on them that represent their value. In order to give them value however, a patron must purchase them. For example, if you wanted $100 worth of $5 chips, you would pay $100 in U.S. currency and receive twenty $5 casino chips.
OK, without getting too long winded, casino chips can be worth more than their face value in the world of chip collectors. There are people who actually buy, trade and collect casino chips. For example, if you had a $5 chip in good/great condition from a bygone casino it might fetch upwards to $1000.
Mind you, a casino chip is worth more than its face value in only the world of collectors. Truth is if you took that $5 chip out of the casino and tried buying a gallon of gas, you’d be tossed out of the station.
Anyway, casino chip collecting is my offbeat idea. As always, please do your due diligence.
Ben Franklin was a wise man indeed. My friend sent me the below public service announcement so we can collectively help as many people as possible.
start—
As Ben Franklin said:
In wine there is wisdom,
in beer there is freedom,
in water there is bacteria.
In a number of carefully controlled trials, scientists have demonstrated that if we drink 1 liter of water each day, at the end of the year we would have absorbed more than 1 kilo of Escherichia coli, (E. coli) bacteria found in feces. In other words, we are consuming 1
kilo of poop.
However, we do NOT run that risk when drinking wine & beer (or tequila, rum, whiskey or other liquor) because alcohol has to go through a purification process of boiling, filtering and/or fermenting.
Remember: Water = Poop,
Wine = Health
Therefore, it’s better to drink wine and talk stupid, than to drink water and be full of shit.
There is no need to thank me for this valuable information: I’m doing it as a public service and because I have a kind heart.
end—
Yes indeed, a kind heart.
Everyone has heard of multiplication and almost everyone knows how to perform this feat of mathematics. However when the investment/economic wizards speak of a multiplier the word can get fuzzy.
Here is how they define multiplier:
A number which indicates the magnitude of a particular macroeconomics policy measure. In other words, the multiplier attempts to quantify the additional effects of a policy beyond those that are immediately measurable. For example, a decrease in taxation will have more of an effect than just the value of the reduced taxes. It will lead to greater disposable income which might cause an increase in consumption, which in turn might increase employment in industries which enjoy greater demand and so on. So the total effect of the implemented policy equals the effect of the policy measure, times the multiplier. This is true of most macroeconomic policy measures, because the actual effect of the measure cannot be quantified by the effect of the measure itself.
Stripped of all the fancy terminology, a multiplier is nothing more than another type of number used to predict a somewhat quantifiable future happening. I like the part about lowered tax rates myself.
We all have debt and our lenders expect us to pay, or cover, the debt. So how does the investment world define debt service coverage?
They say it is the amount of cash or cash flow required to pay off a debt along with the total amount of the debt. The better the debt service coverage, the better off a company or individual is.
That just makes good sense, right? After all, if you have a $1000 debt and $10000 to pay it off, you are in good shape. On the other hand, if you only have $1100, or less, to pay off the $1000 debt, you are in pitiful shape.
Maintaining a high debt service coverage ratio is plain everyday smart financial planning.
At least according to me, these people are slime bags. This is world wide if an article in the I-Cop Trade Journal is correct.
The article is titled:
ISPs and Predatory Advertising
with a link to an article in the NY Times:
Once you read the article you will see why I say they are slimey. By the way, i-cop can be found at:
Sign up for their free newsletter when you visit the site.
It seems that several years ago some former Fannie Mae execs were involved in cooking the books at this lender guarantor so they could get higher bonuses and exercise stock options that would put a huge pile of money into their pockets. Franklin Raines, Timothy Howard and Leanne Spencer were the three the government said owed a mere $115 million in restitution for their book cooking scheme.
Well sir, no good Washington insider ever has to go to jail or pay back what they put in their pocket. Instead of paying the $115 million, they agreed to pay an aggregate $31.4 million.
Former Clinton budget director Franklin Raines, according to published accounts, has agreed to pay $24.7 million, including a $2 million fine and relinquishing of company stock options valued at $15.6 million.
Timothy Howard is paying $6.4 million and Leanne Spencer is paying $275,000. No published account exists as to how much this trio got to keep.
Don’t you wish you had a job like that…
