Superman

Well, good morning, my country!

Today is the birthday of Martin Luther King, a man who stood for truth, justice, and the American way. One of our fellow citizens shot him for it. MLK is a hero to a large segment of America and, unfortunately, so is the guy who shot him, although to a smaller and much different segment.

Martin King had the brilliant idea that racism was about fear, not hatred. He thought that the only way to break down the walls of racism would be to drive out the fear that built the walls in the first place. He said that if you want someone to stop hating you, you couldn't go around killing them and their families and burning their houses and things like that. Nope, you have to be nice, even if it is hard to do.

Takes Courage!

"Return love for hate," he said.

Dang, what a concept! Someone should found a religion on it, or something...Maybe people could claim that our Nation was founded as a Nation that followed this religion's concepts...Wow, wouldn't that be something?

Takes courage!

(Sitting in a war room halfway around the world and dropping a missile on a bunch of women and children inside their own houses doesn't take courage, by the way.)

Happy Birthday, Martin! Back here on earth, we're stupid as ever.


I think that the flames of that fear are stoked by the fuel of greed. Wasn't it greed that drove the slave trade in the first place? Wanting to get rich, as a prime motivation in and of itself, is a great destroyer. Greedy societies always fail and we have to ask if now is the time for ours to fail also...unless we fix it first.

Here is a quote from my favorite financial advisor, Robert Loest

"Americans since the 1960s have perhaps behaved as irresponsibly and immorally as any people in history, including the Renaissance Popes and 17th Century French Royalty. Our savings are virtually gone. We spent it all on ourselves. We have not only eaten all our seed corn, we have borrowed enormous sums from future generations that we will never be able to repay, beggaring our own children and grandchildren in a lifelong rampage of pure selfishness and greed, and have now borrowed, in addition to that, 83% of all the private savings available in the rest of the world."

The rest of this thought may be found here:

http://www.ipsfunds.com/ipsdiary/ipsd_view.asp

Odd, but Mr. Loest quotes Martin Luther King's most admired mortal man in a financial rant. Odder still, that it all comes together so neatly for me:

The things that will destroy us are:
politics without principle;
pleasure without conscience;
wealth without work;
knowledge without character;
business without morality;
science without humanity;
and worship without sacrifice

Gandhi

I couldn't have said it better myself, O' great moral compass that I am!

From a financial standpoint, I have long thought that the Bush Twins will ultimately destroy our country. This would be the Bush Twins of :

record fiscal deficit and the record international trade deficit...

which twins did you think I meant?

Unless we revitalize the manufacturing segment of our economy, we can't succeed as a nation. We have to build things and make things to actually create value. Right now, all we are doing is selling the same rock back and forth to each other, raising the price each time and calling it "Production".

Our record trade deficit is actually the transfer of borrowed money. We buy oil fron the Saudis and they loan it back to us at a profit, using some of it to buy the companies that employ the American worker so they can lay him off and have the same products built in a foreign country with what is essentially slave labor. I mean even a good slave ought to cost more than 65 cents a day in maintenance, don't you think?

MLK, where are you, now that we really need you? If the Chinese slave wage worker that is building all our stuff were paid half our minimum wage, the Chinese economy would collapse.

In the meantime, what can America do? Our currency has lost one third of its worth against the Euro in the last two years.

Hello! Reality calling! Anybody there?

Grab the jelly, 'cause we're toast!

Peace,

Steve


PS: Have you guys seen the big fuss folks are making over the Bush Cowboy boots with the Presidential seal? Pretty fancy cowboy outfit for a man born in New Haven, Connecticut! You knew that , right? Big place for Cowboys, New Haven!