A couple of days ago, a very good friend of mine, Greg, emailed me about the recent emails I have been sending out to my readers. Essentially, he said I was screwing up. His complaint was the recent emails promoting the products of other companies and how it was diluting my message.
Greg is a California entrepreneur who runs a very successful company. He also has a very unique perspective on life and one of the few people I know that truly lives his passions every day. Needless to say, I respect his opinion. I called him because I wanted to know what his thoughts were on my recent email campaigns.
He told me that the promotional emails were not consistent with my ‘voice’. He is a regular reader of my weekly newsletter and enjoyed hearing my viewpoint on various topics. He was even so kind as to say my newsletters were intellectually challenging (although I probably misunderstood him and he just meant I was intellectually challenged…).
I must admit, I agree with him 100%. For this, I want to apologize to you, my readers. These emails are a bit spammy and not consistent with my regular message. As a fallible human, I am capable of mistakes. This was one of them. Oh well, life goes on.
As a lifelong capitalist pig, I unapologetically like to make money. I do not adhere to the social entrepreneurship mantra that seems to be prevalent today, unless of course it makes more money.
The purpose of my newsletter is to enlighten you about current world events and economic situations that can affect your wealth and your lifestyle. My goal is to provide value to you each and every week. If I am accomplishing that goal, please let me know. If not, also let me know what you want to see more of.
Informing you about things like the worldwide debt crisis, capital controls, invasive tax policies, threats to your privacy, and constantly berating the current president (and the next one as well), are my job.
I am also an eternal optimist. I like to see the brighter side of life. The glass is half full, yadda yadda yadda. Because of this, I also want to make you aware of certain opportunities.
So while I do like writing this free weekly newsletter, I also enjoy eating and living indoors. In order to do that, making money is a priority, and fun to boot.
Asset protection planning is the core of my business. I work with clients, like many of you, forming US and offshore entities, setting up trusts and foundations, making offshore bank introductions, and helping you to minimize the risks that are so abundant today.
In addition to the fees I earn as an advisor, I also earn money by promoting products from companies that I trust. You have my commitment that I will not promote products I have not personally vetted.
The recent campaign promoting the “Cash Flow Trading System” comes from a company owned by a friend of mine. He is one of the brightest entrepreneurs I know. His company goes out and searches for hedge fund managers and traders who have a 5-10+ year track record of verifiable success.
He then helps them publish their research. My friend has a gift of finding amazingly talented traders. He is also a marketing genius. While his sales copy is bit spammy, the underlying product is very good quality.
I will continue to offer products to my readers via email, however going forward I will provide a brief introduction from me to alert you the following message is from a partner. This way you can quickly delete any message that does not appeal to you.
I am committed to providing you with useful, actionable information that can potentially improve your quality of life. I make no apologies for earning a living though.
On the topic of actionable information that can improve your life…
Moody’s just this week downgraded Japan from Aa2 to Aa3. As I have stated in previous newsletters, nearly every major country in the world is broke. The past few decades have been an experiment in fiat currency which gives countries around the world the ability to print money with no asset value backstop.
Up until August 15, 1971 the US dollar was convertible into gold. At that time President Nixon temporarily suspended the ability for anyone to convert their dollars into gold. During this time, world currencies traded at a set price against the US dollar. The dollar was exchangeable for gold, giving the US dollar the world reserve currency status. It also meant that every world currency has a fixed value in gold.
Without any asset backing for world currencies, we are at the mercy of politicians to be honest, ethical stewards of our nations (I nearly choked just typing that). The past 40 years have allowed policy makers to over spend using their country’s treasury as their own personal piggybank.
They have lined their pockets and the fattened the wallets of their political contributors effectively creating an aristocracy that is legally allowed to feed off of the productive members of society through manipulation of monetary policy.
It seems this party is now coming to an end. With Europe in financial shambles and many of the EU member states already getting downgrades, the US getting downgraded, and now Japan, even the ratings agencies are finally catching on. Ironically it seems that most of the ratings agencies change their debt ratings months, or even years, too late.
While I consider S&P guilty of procrastination (read my article, ‘Where Turmoil Exists, Opportunity Persists’) with their downgrade of US debt, I find it rather ironic that Deven Sharma, the CEO of S&P, has been fired this week by the board for…wait for it…telling the truth.
Even more amusing though is that his replacement is none other than Douglas Peterson, COO of Citibank. Let that sink in for a minute. Go ahead, I will wait…
Yes sir folks, the new CEO of S&P is none other than the COO of Citibank, one of the biggest recipients of bailout funds. Citi received a direct injection of $45B as well as $301B of bad loan
