Errrrrrrrr!!! Big goverenment, the Federal Reserve and uninformed / irresponsible citizens

I'm so frustrated. What can I say? I do what I can to make sure that my finances are in order. My family works off a budget. We do not sacrifice raising the children that God has entrusted to us for a better lifestyle - i.e. we don't have a HUGE mortgage on a HUGE house. We have a 10 year old car so that we don't have to have a car payment. We try to pay cash for everything in order to not go into debt (Debt by the way is a form of slavery). We do all of this so that my wife can stay at home with the kids and so that I too can spend more time with them.

We do all that we can to not over spend and live below our means and for what? For the Federal Reserve and BIG government to encourage banks to loan money to people who do not have their act together? To a bunch of irresponsible credit junkies?

These people are loosing their homes, their cars and their shirts and I would say in almost all cases rightfully so! And now what? We hear the network news guys saying things like:

"The Fed is pumping billions of dollars into the economy to help out with the credit crisis".

What does this mean? I'll tell you what this means because I'm experiencing this first hand - its painful - and you will too over time.

This means that somebody at the Fed goes over to a laptop and pushes a few keys to "create" money out of thin air. They then push that newly created digital money to the banks. Let me explain the result of this, I'll try to keep it brief.

This is causing immediate and major inflation of our dollar. Our dollar is worth less every time they do this. If you have cash in hand, it is worth less than the day before the Fed does this. How much? About 4% less or so.

I live in Costa Rica. For the first time that I have known of, the dollar has fallen against the Costa Rican colon. What does that mean? My food costs more. My gas costs more. Everything costs more.

What does that mean for you? Your money is worth less on the global market.

What I'm not sure about though:

Is your house worth less? Well, if you're trying to sell it right now and you have it on the market for lets say $200,000. You put it on the market last week. Today the Fed created more money. You have your house for the same price: $200,000. Your house is worth $200,000 in todays dollars and its worth about $192,000 in last months dollars. Do you see what I mean?!

Maybe, if you don't sell your house, over time, the market will correct itself and the price will go up appropriately. In this case by market, I mean the housing market. Maybe, it will correct itself and reflect the true value of your house in today's dollars and not last months dollars. But how long will that take?

The same goes for any money that you have in Savings or 401K plans. Lets say that you have $100,000. Well that money is worth less now than it was last month. Maybe though, that too will correct itself over the next year and it will increase as our inflation has. (I hope so.....)

My opinion about this? Let those irresponsible people in foreclosure figure it out on their own or with help from private parties. The market needs to eat them (figuratively). This is the fastest way for us to move on. Even Clark Howard says this.

My greater opinion on this? Get us back on the gold standard and eliminate the Federal Reserve. Bottom line, (SO LISTEN UP HERE): The Fed is a private entity. Its not of the government. Don't let the name trick you. This private entity creates money out of thin air and loans it to us and our government at an interest! How absurd is that??? This private entity, the Federal Reserve, is ultimately owned by private individuals. It is to the benefit to these individuals that our government grows, becomes more socialist, takes more responsibility from the private sector, creates more wars, has socialized medicine, welfare, etc...... Why? Because it needs to borrow more of this imaginary money at an interest to be paid back to the Federal Reserve (to these private individuals).

So there you go. I guess that's why Republicans are good at war and Democrats are good at taking care of irresponsible people.

One more thing. What does this mean for me? Well I'm a hustler, I'm a fighter, I'm a schemer and more important than that, I trust The Almighty. I've seen Him do nutty stuff. CRAZY stuff. Sure yeah, I'll keep scheming. I have to. But I know that there's a way out for my family and me that will be provided by The Provider. Not sure what it is right now. But there is one.

No PC for me please

Ha Ha Ha! There's been a Political Correctness backfire in retail America. You know how when you're leaving some big chain store (or mall store) after shopping this time of the year and they say to you "Happy Holidays". If you're like me, there's something inside of you that's actually bothered by that simple phrase; and if you're like me you say back to them "Thanks, Merry Christmas :-)".

Well, it looks like this silly political correctness is backfiring. How funny. These retail giants try not to offend anyone with their "Happy Holidays" but end up offending a huge base of clients called Christians (which by the way are part of the majority religion in the USA).

Why be so politically correct? I really don't get it. If I were in Saudi Arabia during Ramadan and someone said something like: "Happy Ramadan" or "Happy fasting" or something like that, I would gladly respond back to them the same greeting with no qualms about it whatsoever.

Well, it turns out that some of these stores are wisening up. I heard on the news the other day that Wal-Mart is making the switch to now use the phrase: "Merry Christmas".

I used to think that I was probably the only one offended or bothered with the blatant omission of any reference to my Savior in that greeting but it looks like you and everyone else were too.

Living Debt Free being part of a Faith Walk

Today, I've been listening to Dave Ramsey, like I do a lot. He was giving a high incomed fellow advice on whether to buy a house now or wait two years for the cash to be there to just pay for it. While giving the advice, Dave said something like buying things without debt is part of his faith walk.

For Dave, when he wants to buy something whether its a car, house or starting a business; its a spiritual decision. When he's saying that its part of his faith walk, I interpret that to someone buying like this:

"God, I want to buy something; but I do not have the resources to buy it. I will do my part in looking for those resources so that I can obtain what I'm trying to buy and at the same time I will trust you to provide that which I am seeking."

This does spin into a tangent that I won't address in this post and that being that perhaps God does not want you to buy that something (hence, perhaps that's the reason why you shouldn't use credit to obtain it).

One interesting idea is that if you use credit to purchase something then perhaps you are short circuiting God's provision.

But in the USA, they say that you have to have a mortgage to buy your home. But, does it have to be this way?!

Well, back in the United Social America

I've been in Georgia for a week now. Well a week tomorrow. I flew stand by and managed to fly back in 1st class. This was a first time for me. I have to say that I really enjoyed it. It was quite a treat.

Work has been interesting. We have a new VP who's a soldier. The guy does not take any crap and is cracking the whip on everybody. This has been going on for almost 2 months now. I have to say, that it is a welcomed change though on my part. It is a challenge.

I'm carless right now. Been getting around on MARTA. So far so good.

I was about 3 days shy of being in Costa Rica for 6 months straight. This is the longest time that I've ever been abroad.

Interesting enough, on Tuesday evening, after my first day back in the office, I was walking to the MARTA station. I twisted my ankle on a divot in the side walk. I had a flashback to my first day working from an internet cafe in Costa Rica. That night, I also twisted my ankle while walking on the side walk (See earlier blog post) . This time as well as that time I feared that I would not be able to run for awhile; however that wasn't the case as Thursday I ran a pretty good 4.4 mile going between my sister's and my granddaddy's neighborhoods.

Tomorrow, God willing, the rest of my family will be here. Speaking of the phrase "God willing", Costa Ricans (as well as other hispanics) use a variation of that phrase constantly: "si Dios quiere" ("if God wants" or "if God wills it") . The apostle Paul talks about this in one of his letters saying something like don't say you plan on going to this city or that and'll do business for a time you should say if God wills it then ...... etc.

Crown update

We are 70% through the Crown study. We decided to split up into 2 groups. Meyling has one and I have the other.

Meyling has 11 people. I had 11 but am now down to 10. One lady had to drop it due to recently becoming pregnant and the added stresses and complexities because of that.

Its really exciting. We have 3 more weeks to go and are on track with 21 people graduating! These folks are motivated, dedicated and excited about making wise changes in their lives and seeing God do BIG things.

In my group, every person is capable of leading this study. I'm hoping at least half of the them lead a Crown study in the next year. God willing, we will do one or two more at this church in January 2008.

On a lighter note, whoever is in charge of the bulletin keeps leaving in there: "Thursday night: Bible study at 7:00 pm". The problem is, that Bible study is not going on and has not happened in months! We've had 2 people show up, each on 2 different occasions thinking that one of our Crown classes was "The Bible Study". The thing is, crown is designed to be a closed small group Bible study. Once started, no new members should be admitted in. This is to maintain consistency and promote a more intimate small group study.

The funny thing, in this church of about 200 people or so, only 2 people have come looking for the Bible study in the past 7 weeks!

Fine Culture

Every September, this is what folks in my home town do on Saturday night of Buggy Days. One time I almost had that pig. I was about 8 or 9 years old. My dad told me to not run with the crowd but to stay in the open and the pig would eventually run to me. Well the pig did and I grabbed that joker by its hind legs. He was slippery cause they'd greased em up before the chase. I had em for about 2 seconds and then Brian Nicholas jumped on me and that pig just slipt on away. Oh well.....

Crown in Cartago, Costa Rica

Finally, looks like Meyling and I are going to be able to facilitate a Crown group in her home church in Cartago, Costa Rica. This is something we've been wanting to do for 8 years now! Pastor Esteban and his wife have been very supportive of our efforts and plan to be in the first group. This past Sunday, Aug 26th the announcement was made in front of the church. From that announcement, we got a list of 26+ people. I was told that even more we're interested but for some reason, failed to get their names on the list because of miscommunication or something.

We have a problem here but it is a good problem. We can only have 12 to 14 people max in a group. Because of so much interest I want to do 2 groups. The Crown office in Costa Rica has already told us that they cannot provide additional facilitators, but they can provide us a 4 hour leadership training session. Two 'leader' couples have already shown some interest in doing the study but I have not approached either one of them yet about facilitating a group.

My idea right now, is to try to get both couples to lead a group together with Meyling and me giving them some support while Meyling and I facilitate a group ourselves. I'm overwhelmed in a good way not in a bad way. I'm overwhelmed at how God just dumped all of those people in front of us. I thought after the announcement that we would have 4 or 5 people in a group. Frankly, I'm just shocked at how many people are wanting to do this.

The size of the church is about 350 members. They had about 200 adults there last Sunday. This also just happened to coincide with Pastor Esteban being voted in as the official pastor of the church.

In case you're wondering what Crown is, it is a 10 week Bible study about money. It covers many topics some of which are debt, savings, work, tithing, retirement and training children. The general philosophy of Crown is that our money and our possessions are not ours but in fact belong to God and are on loan to us from God Himself. Therefore we are not owners but actually stewards and must administer these things in such a way that is pleasing to God.

Dave Ramsey has a similar course. See the following links:

http://www.crown.org
http://www.daveramsey.com

Fighting for Jesus

Right now, the boy is riding around in the garage on his scooter singing, "I will fight for you Jesus", "Jesus help me fight for you". What do I do? Do I let it go or do we have a theological discussion? At least he's also singing, "Jesus loves me", "I love you too Jesus."

Some Urban Outdoors Man stories

Yesterday, while dropping off the boy at school (its not a traditional school, they run around and play the whole day) I almost ran over an urban outdoors man sleeping on the side of the road. I was turning right off the two lane paved (busy) main road onto a dirt road. The Urban Outdoors man was sleeping on the side of the dirt road. As I made the turn, he was on the starboard side of the 4x4 vehicle that I was piloting. As I passed him, I honked the horn.

I dropped off the boy. On the return trip, I was determined to wake that fellow up. So I made my decent down the unpaved road and stopped right beside the man's sleeping area. I honked the horn and yelled at him to get up. I asked if he was worried about getting ran over. He slightly stirred but refused to acknowledge my presence. I had to move on, as another vehicle was turning left off of the paved road into the Urban Outdoors man's sleeping area.

Last Saturday, I saw a fellow at about 2:00 pm taking a nap laying perpendicular across the side walk. He was sleeping very very sound asleep as there was a lot of traffic passing by him and he was not moving.

There's this gas station on the west side of Cartago that has a lot of these outdoors man that come by to visit folks while they are filling up their gas tanks. About 2 months ago, when we were getting gas, within 3 minutes, 2 different outdoors men had come by the driver's side window and startled my wife. I had some cold french fries, so I gave one of them the fries. He was very happy and ate them on up.

There's this other dude that's kind of close to the Mas x Menos grocery store. (Pronounced Mas por Menos). This guy has to be about 20 years old and seems to have a serious cash flow problem as he's constantly walking around in the intersection approaching drivers of stopped vehicles at the traffic light asking for money.

About 2 years ago, when I was down here I was approached by an urban outdoors man requesting money. At first I ignored him acting like I couldn't speak Spanish (you know, playing the stupid gringo). This guy then started speaking to me in perfect English. I realized I couldn't ignore him, so we spoke in English for a while. I finally gave him some change. He had spent time in California doing construction work. His English was really good.

New Proposed Flag for US

I'm proposing this as the new flag for the USA (United Socialist America.) Since we are becoming so communist in our mentality we should change our flag in order to keep up with the current culture. Friends, we are a far cry from those rugged, liberty minded individuals who settled our great land and made our country. Never mind that the preamble of our Constitution says "provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare". Now our government "provides the general Welfare and somewhat promotes the common defense". (Look at our border with Mexico)

I like this flag. Notice first of all, there are no more stars. Those stars are outdated representing a time in the past when we had different states, each with different opinions that frankly just get in the way of the "common" good. What business does a state (let alone a people) have governing themselves. With the states gone, its just THE ONE BIG FAT MAMA GUBERMENT takin care of us all.

The hammer and sickle represent the so called working class. I say so called, because that class can shrink on up as there is becoming less and less incentive to work because the fruits of their labor are being reaped by the BIG FAT ONE. To be honest, the hammer and sickle really represent serfdom and slavery. In reality, you are just a serf or a slave. To make you feel better about your condition though, we'll let you think that the hammer and sickle stand for the "working class".

Notice also even though there is the hammer and sickle representing the serfs, there is no symbol representing the entrepreneur, the owner, the owner-operator or any other category of class of a free nation with a diverse economy. That's because THE GUBERMENT holds all of those roles and titles. You are just a serf in this post-liberty feudal system.

Yes, you noticed that the 13 stripes are still there. That's there to make you think that you are still free. A token of patriotism of the past. A means to blind you of your current state. Well quit reading this and get back to work for the ONE GUBERMENT. If you're not working though, don't worry, they'll take care of you......