This prophecy was spoken by an unnamed Hopi Elder of Oraibi, Arizona. it speaks of this time of transition in our world and asks important questions. It speaks of the possibility of this being a good time. We can create that with an expanded perception in life and with deep and true questions about ourselves and the way we choose to live.

–Martin

The Hopi Elder Speaks

“You have been telling the people that this is the 11th hour.

Now you must go back and tell the people that this is The Hour.

And there are things to be considered. . . . (more…)

By Neal Van Zutphen

I am fascinated by the human mind and our emotions, particularly as they engage money.  This blog is based on my financial planning practice, my current research and attempts to understand them.

Let me share my own bias.  My fundamental belief system is humanistic in nature.  Accordingly, I tend to seek empirical data that embraces the concept of free will or the power of choice.  That is my worldview.  Generally, it serves me well in both my personal life and my professional services. (more…)

Money as Debt

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream–and not make dreams your master,
If you can think–and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings–nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!
–Rudyard Kipling

As the Bush Administration asks for close to a trillion dollars to prevent a worldwide financial cataclysm, here are some numbers you might find interesting — courtesy of the ABC News Research Center and ABC News’ Barbara Paulson.
In 2007, Wall Street’s five biggest firms– Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, and Morgan Stanley -   paid a record $39 billion in bonuses to themselves.
That’s $10 billion more than the $29 billion loan taxpayers are making to J.P. Morgan to save Bear Stearns.
Those 2007 bonuses were paid even though the shareholders in those firms last year collectively lost about $74 billion in stock declines –their worst year since 2002.
This type of pay is corrosive and has many long term impacts on the world that extend beyond any moral judgment. First of all, like drug crime, it sucks the best kids away from all other ways of making a living. In the inner cities it is not the incompetent boys who get into the drug business, it is the kids with talent and drive. They mostly end up on the dark side. So, too, with investment banking where most of the most talented kids in business school aspire to join Goldman Sachs.
Because of this attraction of huge piles of money, this talent is not available for the other more important and productive parts of our society.
Secondly, investment banking no longer mainly works to ensure that the productive parts of our world are financed. Now it mainly plays with money. It was in 1984 that the power began to shift from the Investment bankers who financed projects to the trading rooms that dealt for their own book. Most of the action on Wall Street - where most of the serious money is made and hence where the attention is paid - is connected to trading for the house - either for a bank or for a hedge fund
So the huge paydays pull the best people away from the productive parts of the society and economy and into activities that are no better that drug dealing. But this giant casino is absolutely toxic as we are discovering.
It undermines the real world. It destroys the value of our lives. It too makes us all addicts of easy money. They are the crack dealers and we are the punters. They make the money and the public becomes helpless and impoverished.
For like drugs, easy play money feeds on itself. All the imagination and energy go into making the payday even bigger. All the imagination goes into new ideas of how to get us to do the wrong thing. So as we are finding out, the piper who pays for all of this is us. We pay in losing our homes and we pick up the bill for the dealers.
Any system of reform has to look into the “System”. At the heart of it is how people are paid. If we don’t change this - then nothing will have changed and we will end up in even worse trouble.

Martin Siesta

© 2008 Martin Siesta. Reprinted with permission.