I think there is a lot we can learn by examining how people in the desert “harvest” water. Everyone likes to cite how rough it is in today’s economy, but it seems we often forget that times of crisis can also lead us to innovative breakthroughs and new ideas. Sometimes, we just need the proper perspective.

As I look forward, I can’t help but feel things will get worse before they get better. As such, I want to find ways to free myself from being dependent on others to live my life. When we examine our lives, we can easily find that much of our happiness is tied to things we think are important, things we often need to take possession of in order to define our goal of happiness. We need to remember that happiness is just a state of mind, a choice we make. Once that is realized, we can also realize our true power and claim our very own freedom.

Ok, I will shut up now – time for the video. Watch and let ideas permeate you much like the drops of water as they make their way into these ancient, yet vital, water harvesting systems in the desert.

I am currently looking to relocate for a job, and have had a hard time finding property that was exciting enough to inspire me to move. The funny thing is, I was looking at how property was being sold and have found the usual foreclosures in the area – something that is becoming more prevalent these days due to over inflating the value of homes with the ease of which loans were being assigned.

The real estate game is definitely part of the blame for the economic deflation we are going through right now. And it is looking criminal.

I found a property that was sold for $200K  in 2002 then re-sold in 2005 for $479K. It was then bought by a bank for $100.00. Yes, one hundred bucks. Sounds crazy? Well, look how much it was being listed for now – $350,000.

It makes one wonder how is it possible to buy houses for fractions of pennies on the dollar in order to flip it for a huge profit? And how do the banks get away with this considering they made the bad loan in the first place and where given a stimulus bail out package, only to buy the property back and flip it for massive profits? Special interest groups and lobbyists, of course.

Just another problem churning in our economy that has to be fixed. I have no solutions as I really don’t have a working knowledge of real estate. But if anyone else can comment, please feel free to do so – it is something worth looking into. Besides, with so many people upside down in their homes it would be a benefit to the economy for people to purchase foreclosed homes in order to reinstate some worth in their portfolio. Our economy is only as strong as the weakest among us.

In the industry I am in, there seems to be little room for things if they are not perceived to be practical. That industry, being education, does not seem to be open to true innovation. That said, there are those in the “market” that want more. This has drawn me towards the idea of creating my own business. I am going to put together some ideas and resources in this article here to kind of get me started. Feel free to use it if you like and make comments on it as well.

General Small Business Resources

I am starting with the SBA (Small Business Administration). They have lots of resources and tools to get you started. Here are some:

• Free Online Training
• SCORE
• Small Business Development Centers
• Women’s Business Centers
• SBA District Offices
• Regulations and Compliance
• Business Forms
• Get Ready – Small Business Planner
• Small Business Primer – Strategies for Success (Free online course)*
• How to Prepare a Business Plan (Free online course)*

*The last two will lead you first to a registration screen – its free. They are recommended in order as steps 1 and 2 of a 4 step process towards starting your business. There is also a survey you can take to assess where you are at in regards to starting up your business: you can find that survey here.

Business Plans

• SCORE’s templates for business plans
• Sample Buisness Plans

Choosing the Right Kind of Business

• Business Structures

Get an EIN for Your Business

• IRS EIN Registration

Estimating Startup Costs

• General Categories of a Startup Cost Plan
• Microsoft Startup Center

Here is a Startup Cost Calculator to get things going:

Starting Costs Calculator

Get Funded

• SBA Loan Programs
• SBA Micro Loans
• Requirements for SBA Loan Assistance
• Financing Basics
• How to apply for a loan
• Writing a loan proposal
• Bank loan request template (SCORE)
• Loan Package Checklist

Understand Finances

Six main financial categories of your business are:

• Assets
• Liabilities
• Equity
• Income
• Expenses
• Profits

There are three main financial statements used by your business

• Balance Sheet (Liabilities + Equity=Assets) – a snap-shot of a business at a given time
• Income Statement (Income – Expenses = Profits) – measures how a business has performed over a given time period
• Cash Flow Statement – shows available cash on hand

Marketing Strategies

Probably one of the most important aspects for starting your business is understanding if there is even a market for it and what that market consists of – profit potential as well as competition. Is there enough market to meet your supply? How do you ensure your competition won’t eat your bottom line? The key is building customer relationships.

Market research – usually consists of gathering data in some fashion, for example via a survey. It is recommended that if you do issue a survey that you offer a small token of appreciation in return.

Demographics - some resources on how to get data about demographic research

• SBCDNet
• SBA Market Research
• Develop a Marketing Plan
• Market and Price
• SBCDNet Marketing Plans

There is also the notion of Target Marketing. This can be achieved in two basic ways:

• Geographical segmentation – deciding on your market based on location; is it international, national or regional?
• Customer segmentation – deciding your market based on the potential profile of your customer; young, old, middle aged? active, sedentary?

What about the “marketing mix”? A good marketing strategy will employ the following four components into making a “mixed” marketing strategy:

• Products and Services
• Promotion
• Price
• Distribution

Finally, create your Marketing Plan. Very similar to, and as important as, a Business Plan, it allows you to state your target market and what your products and services will be focused on.

Stay tuned for more updates.

This is a concept that will take some time to develop. This post, of course, will be an evolutionary creature in that I will need time to grab various ideas and cobble them together. Yet, from the outset, this discussion must be built upon this simple argument: a federal bank, or a centralized bank, serves only to destroy the greater interests of the United States and its economy.

At its heart, at best well-intentioned, a centralized bank creates several issues. Here is the gist of why Andrew Jackson worked hard as president to destroy the Second Bank of the United States during his term:

• It concentrates the nation’s finances in a single institution
• This institution could be more easily manipulated, which made the government much more susceptible to foreign interests
• It was a vessel used only to make the rich richer
• It had great influence over the politicians as it was used to supply their interests
• At the time, it favored northern states over the southern and western states

Jackson’s distaste of the centralized bank was not unfounded. After all, Thomas Jefferson said:

The central bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the principles and form of our Constitution. I am an enemy to all banks discounting bills or notes for anything but coin. If the American people allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.

Greenspan comments on the existence of the Federal Reserve

Here is something else to consider – a documentary on what the Federal Reserve is. It has a biased message so consider it carefully. Then again, it coincides with the message of this post.

Part 1/5

Part 2/5

Part 3/5

Part 4/5

Part 5/5

Yet, there are discussions out there that can save us from this mess. In fact, there was a politician running in the general election for president that was running under a major party’s ticket. That politician is Ron Paul and as a Republican, he holds values that are closer to Libertarian ideals.

There are others fighting to raise awareness. For instance, what if there was no law that enforced the payment of the federal income tax? What if this product of the IRS was unconstitutional?

Let’s face it, as we advance technologically, our privacy disappears. And in its stead we have a new version of discrimination – only this time it isn’t by a person or a group of people, but rather by a cold “unbiased” machine such as a computer linked to a data base.

What am I talking about? Well, I am talking about “super crunching” which requires large amounts of data to be collected, compiled and spit out about people and the information will describe their actions, buying patterns, past history, etc. In fact, some of the information that is collected on you you may not even recall yourself!

I recently listened to a program on Coast to Coast that interviewed a Yale professor who seems to be very supportive of this – which to me seems pretty naive. It cannot be solely a positive thing; regardless of how we may feel about it it is here. Google is a pretty good example of this as Google is a private company that wants to catalog and store as much information as it can. Other companies use these large databases of information for many purposes, such as to estimate your “pay pain” or how much of a discount you would need to purchase your product. Based on the data compiled, they can formulate a picture of you and your future and place in society and determine your economic footprint.

It is a tool that can be used for both good or for evil. Fears about insurance companies accessing your spending habits may lead them to increase your rates because you are buying alcoholic products or perhaps buying lots of fast food. Regardless, this information can be used against you in some situations which begs the question – why not pay cash for everything? After all, our economy is crumbling and it is based on creating debt and not acquiring savings. If you pay cash for everything not only are you exercising good economic principles for yourself (and the economy in which you live) but you also keep private your spending habits so companies can’t get a hold of this information.

Unless you willingly give it out – such as with surveys, etc.

It is interesting to note, however, that as data storage technologies advance, our privacy deteriates. The more data that can be stored and accessed the easier it is to compile this data and the more it will be used. And you thought keeping up with your credit report was a problem.

Let’s face it, the economy sucks. And our government is not making it any better – which is incidentally exactly what the government’s job should be when meddling with the economy: to screw it up.

Now, I am all for a level playing field and ensuring that rules are in place to allow for fair competition. But I am also for giving an advantage to the home team – and our economy has been failing miserably in this regard for well over a decade now (so no, Barack, this is not just Bush’s failed economic policies.)

Without launching into a tirade, the likes of which I would only mess up the details and misconstrue facts, I figured it would be most prudent to justify my own minute economy. After all, just like the macrocosm, my economy too is based heavily on debt production. This is the problem, and why inflation continues to eat up all of our dollars.

The best way to live life is debt free – after all, can a man truly claim himself to be free if he is saddled with debt? No, his master is the latest debt he has created to which he owes, owes, owes. And off to work he goes, goes, goes.

So I am convinced by various authors out there who are propounding us to get off our debt-addicted lifestyles. How could we not give in to this temptation if, after all, this is how our economy functions and “thrives”? I placed that last bit in quotes because the entire system is based on this notion of getting a quick payout – no one cares if they can afford it or not. And our economy continues to falter.

This isn’t just about America though, no. The entire world is suffering from bad lending and too much credit. The US, as bad off as we are, will probably not be as bad as in other places. If we are to really make change here – stop thinking it will happen based on who you allow to serve you in the White House. It isn’t the man you choose to represent your beliefs and wishes that will change anything for you. Instead, it is YOU who will make that change, and it is YOU who will not only benefit from it but together, we can all change the world.

I know, sounds corny. But getting over our debts individually is the first step. And that is where I intend to get myself: debt free. Truly, a free man.

Just more proof that the idea of ethanol as a fuel source is stupid.

For those of you out there thinking that ethanol is the answer to our rising gas prices, there are several fundamental things you need to be made aware of.

First of all, check out the commodities market. If I understand this correctly, you can buy barrels of oil to invest in. What happens then is that barrel you purchased is taken off the market and not used for consumption. With the rise in prices for barrels of oil, is it any wonder why it is a sound investment? So, lets say you and some friends buy 10 barrels of oil. No big deal. Then what if other groupings do the same? Then what about other countries? See where this is going?

If everyone starts purchasing oil to invest in, and essentially sit on, the price of oil will continue to rise as the supply dries up. It is an excellent way to create economic subterfuge, if you are an enemy of the United States, too. So while you make more money investing in oil, you are part of the problem of the continued rise in gas prices. You are choking yourself with both hands.

Something else you should know about – ethanol itself is not efficient. And to boot, it replaces rising fuel costs with a rising cost in food.

To produce ethanol, corn is used. It is a plentiful crop but when that resource is used in fuel, it is being taken away from farms that are using that as feed for livestock or even corporations that use corn in their product, like Coca-Cola which uses it in the production of their soft drinks. There are indirect effects and direct effects, of course, all of which drive up the cost of food and the demand for corn which only further drives up the cost as well.

Here is something of interest that I found in my egg carton this week as I went grocery shopping. It was from Country Hen eggs, and it struck me because now the anti-ethanol movement is finally starting to take shape. I will reproduce the pamphlet here because the message is important – I just hope the folks at Country Hen don’t mind me sharing this with anyone who cares as I am sure that was their intention, too.

Dear Egg Buyer,

Corn, Wheat and Feed – Wow!

The cost of feed is going up, and up, and up! Our mixed feed has gone up 49%! Our percentage of increase in costs from 2006 to 2008 was the following:

• Corn 85%
• Diesel 57%
• Wheat 102%
• Layer Feed 49%
• What is Ethanol?

I never knew about ethanol until recently. You get oil and nitrogen and you can get fuel from corn. Right now, 20% of the corn crop in the US is being used for ethanol. The three biggest companies producing ethanol are POET, Archer Daniels Midland and VeraSun. Some US farmers have their own ethanol companies.

Dr. David Pimentel of Cornell

There are great problems with corn. Just last week, Dr. David Pimentel, Professor of Ecology and Agricultural Sciences, talked to us. He is one of the world’s experts on ethanol concerning corn. At present, the US uses a total of about 333 billion gallons of oil. If some of the farmers andsome compaies want to use 40% of the corn crop in the US for ethanol, that would only be 4% of the US gas needs. Why bother with ethanol? Also just to produce one gallon of ethanol, you need 1.4 gallons of gasoline (equivalent energy). That is awful!

Dr. Pimentel Point Out Corn

Corn is the crop with the worst impact on soil erosion. Corn production requires a greater quantity of insecticides and herbicides than other crops. Corn is the crop that uses the most nitrogen fertilizer. The nitrogen leaking from corn production down the Mississippi into the Gulf of Mexico is the cause of “The Dead Zone”, which is the size of New Jersey. The “Dead Zone” has a huge decrease in fish life and plant life.

What Will Happen?

The percentage of corn crops for ethanol will go higher. Government subsidies of $6 billion will go higher. In addition, about 70% of corn is fed to animals. We can’t stop using the corn for animals to use it for ethanol instead. We, the Country Hen, will tell our customers that some of these businesses are not telling the truth. We will pass on some price increase, but we cannot turn over the entire increase to our customers.

Sincerely,

George S. Bass

If you are interested in reading more about Dr. Pimentel, here is an article published on the net two years ago that details some more of his argument against ethanol as a fuel source. I still contend that hydrogen is a much better alternative to supplement the current fuel infrastructure as well as to provide a bridge for a stand-alone fuel source of the future.

Is it no wonder why we are in the midst of a huge economic crisis? Of course, no one is really talking about it either. But read this:

“Free trade…invites the product of cheaper labor to this market to destroy the domestic product representing our high and better paid labor. It destroys our factories or reduces our labor to the level of his [foreign markets]. It increases foreign production but diminishes home production…Open competition between high paid American labor and poorly paid ____ labor will either drive out of existence American industry or lower American wages, either of which is unwise.”

Now, I placed the blank in the quote on purpose. Two reasons: 1) it might help identify the quote or at least date it, and 2) the absence of the identity is more startling when revealed.

Here’s why: this is a quote from William McKinley who was on his presidential campaign trail in 1892 boasting about his McKinley tariff which he passed in Congress in 1890. (Thanks to E. Christian Kopff’s exquisite book, The Devil Knows Latin – exhorting us all to the study of classics, which I obviously support as well.)

Does it still sound relevant today? And when you fill in the blank with the rest of McKinley’s quote – Europe – then it becomes even more relevant. Anyone who has traveled to Europe, or is simply trying to make ends meet here and listens to the business portion of their favorite 24 hour news channels, will echo how the Euro has surpassed the dollar in its buying power. And since the US economic policy since Woodrow Wilson (if I get this correct) has been to diminish the tariff placed on foreign products in favor of free trade, we can see why we are faced with the crisis of outsourcing today.

All it took to avoid this mess was simply to know our history. That the US was at its strongest economically when it protected its market with tariffs (a Republican idea, for those of you keeping score at home) on foreign goods. Could be a way to get us back on track again, too.

This is something that needs to be studied very closely in this day and age, and something which I am going to be thinking about and discussing here on the site.

It is about the future and the present, and the state of the United States at this time. Our country, as I do very much consider myself an American, is changing. Now, this is not necessarily good or bad, as such a perspective can only be reserved for those who have all the facts – and that falls into two parties, the dead or those reading this from a point in the future. The fact is, our world is quickly changing and the ideas we were given before to navigate our world are almost as quickly becoming outdated.

What is interesting to note is how these changes are taking shape in our economy. There is a lot to be concerned about – rising gas costs, rising food costs as a result, the percentage of your pay that is taken by the government and the very little return on your investment you get with your tax money. The devaluing of the dollar – or is it simply a market correction? You would be made to believe that the U.S. is a third world country, without any worthy exports and industry of any kind. That the American people are lazy and do nothing productive.

I would argue that is our current government, as it has become bloated with all the tax dollars that are a guaranteed yield. But not the people which are being governed. Strangely, everyone is too busy to notice what is going on.

Yet, I can’t help but wonder. Today, there was a power outage in south Florida that resulted in a loss of power for many residents here across the southern tip of Florida – some 4.4 million FPL consumers. I say consumer as if we have a choice, which we obviously don’t. This got me thinking, how prepared am I and my loved ones to deal with a crisis like that? What would we do next in a political, economic or ecological meltdown to survive?

Then there is something else. Are we being conditioned? Are we being bombarded with psychological stimuli that are meant to put us in a near constant state of anxiety to shape us into a more docile and needy public? Set up to be easily controlled? If such a task were being employed, it would have to be a multi-generational plan. Starting to sound like a conspiracy? Well, let’s not quite go that far. Take a look at this, however – just found it interesting.