'General Articles' Category Archive

Posted on Jan 16th, 2008

Inverted interest rates? What’s that? Who cares? Even if you don’t understand what Mr. Greenspan is saying (and almost nobody does) it is important to you because it could mean you might lose you job next year or have to cut back on some of the things you want to acquire.

It really is very simple, but most of the media broadcasters don’t understand it because they are reading from a script written by someone else who doesn’t understand it either. Let me take a whack at explaining it in plain language.

There are two kinds of interest rates – short term and long term. The amount of interest paid has to do with the amount of time that is involved. We are talking about long term and short term bonds that pay dividends. If you lend me a thousand dollars with the agreement I will pay you back in one year you can easily understand that the risk is less than if I agree to pay you back in 20 years. The amount of risk is reflected in the rate of interest. Longer is higher and shorter is lower. Pretty simple.

Now we throw the monkey wrench into the machinery. Greenspan arbitrarily sets interest rates rather than letting the market place determine them. The so-called Fed Funds rate is the short-term interest rate set by Greenspan that banks charge each other when one bank loans to another or from the Fed. The basic policy of banks is to borrow short and loan long. That means they borrow money at lower rates (5%) and loan out at higher long-term rates (6%). Unfortunately, we now have the monkey wrench that is ruining the machinery because the short-term rate is higher than the long-term rates.

This effectively cuts down on the amount of money banks have to loan and means the banks must cut back on loans for new business and loans for old business expansion. This is a very effective tool that our big money guru is using. Big G has said he wants to slow down the economy and he is doing it. He thinks a 2 ½% growth is fast enough; however, when you slow to 2 ½% from 6% that is 58%. Too much, too fast. What would happens if your company had 58% reduction in growth?

Money is the lifeblood of our economy. When you curtail the money flow it is like a person having congestive heart failure. Some people die and some businesses go bankrupt, but both must slow down drastically.

The amount of money flowing in our economy must be increased and the quickest way to do it is for Greenspan to reverse his course and start lowering the rates. Most of this break in the stock market can be laid at the doorstep of Mr. Greenspan. His micromanaging can lead to a recession.

Al Thomas’ book, "If It Doesn’t Go Up, Don’t Buy It!" has helped thousands of people make money and keep their profits with his simple 2-step method. Read the first chapter at http://www.mutualfundmagic.com and discover why he’s the man that Wall Street does not want you to know.

Copyright 2005

al@mutualfundstrategy.com; 1-888-345-7870

Posted on Jan 13th, 2008

Two weeks ago I wrote about what the Securities and Exchange Commission was doing to regulate the mutual fund industry to help the small investor, the “poor folks”. It really added up to zero.

Now the SEC is going to make new regulations for hedge funds to protect the rich folks. And it is more window dressing. In fact, it looks downright stupid. When I say rich folks it is because in order to qualify to invest in a hedge fund you must have assets of one million dollars and income of $200,000 per year for a single person and $300,000 for a couple. With this kind of money you can hire an attorney or financial expert to read the hedge fund document. Furthermore, the major investors in hedge funds are not little investors, but pension plans, endowments and universities that are supposed to be administered by professionals.

The SEC says they want to put in regulations to help prevent fraud. Hey, you guys, what about all the fraud you did NOT find in the regular mutual fund industry? They missed multimillions of fraud in standard “poor folks” mutual funds and now they want regulations to protect the rich folks. All this will do is create more useless expensive jobs in Washington. Every time you hire a new government worker it is the same as putting more tax on everyone, rich and poor.

The Senate Banking Committee voted it in by a 3 to 2 committee decision. Three Democrats for and 2 Republicans against. It is the usual liberal Democrat who wants “feel good” legislation that does no good, but tells the public “we care”. Such expensive nonsense.

And how are they going to put this new regulation into effect? More paperwork without question. The funds would be required to hire a Compliance Officer who would write out a set of trading procedures and a code of ethics. Because I have owned a regulated brokerage company I can tell you this is a pile of BS. The new compliance officer is paid by management. He is a toothless tiger. And the SEC will come to do an on-site audit every 2 to 5 years. Because my company was in Florida they did not show up until January or February.

What is most interesting is that there were only 46 hedge fund fraud cases during the past 5 years involving about one billion dollar. In an industry with more than $800 billion in assets this is a spit. Let the rich folks sue and don’t burden us “poor” taxpayers.

This new regulation means nothing and is merely a first step for more stringent rules to follow. It is another additional cost of doing business and adds to our taxes.

Al Thomas’ book, "If It Doesn’t Go Up, Don’t Buy It!" has helped thousands of people make money and keep their profits with his simple 2-step method. Read the first chapter at http://www.mutualfundmagic.com and discover why he’s the man that Wall Street does not want you to know.

Copyright 2005

al@mutualfundstrategy.com; 1-888-345-7870

Posted on Jan 13th, 2008

Let’s first define insanity. It is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. And that is what most investors do and they can’t understand why they are not able to make money in the stock market.

Do these investors need a psychiatrist, a psychologist, a talk with their minister or none of the above? I know, you think they should talk to their broker or their financial planner. Believe me, folks, these two are part of the problem and not the solution.

If they knew the answers everyone would be rich. Let’s go back and look at who taught these mavens how to invest. The Wall Street brokerage houses taught them or rather did not teach them the most basic rules of the game. Why? Because brokerage houses want you to buy (for commission) and they do not want you to sell even though that means another commission. There are two basic reasons they don’t want you to sell and it has nothing to do with that one selling commission.

If you sell you might take your money out of your account and that is one of the things the Maul Street crowd never wants to happen, but the most important is they make money when your account is invested. It is not a lot, but it in a nice steady 1% or more. You are their unspoken collateral in the worldwide money shuffle.

Any broker who suggests a customer sell is usually chastised in some way or just plain fired. A broker who allows large sums of cash to accumulate in customers accounts is told to invest (?) it or hit the road. The house (that’s the brokerage firm) does not want to see customers with big cash balances although there are times when that is exactly where they should be. Remember 2000 to 2003? During that three year period wouldn’t it have been better for your account to have had no stock or fund positions?

Brokers or financial planners are not taught simple methods to protect customer funds. And I mean simple. Too many folks during the 2000 debacle lost 40% of their money and more. There was absolutely no reason for this if basic money management techniques were instituted.

Customers could be made aware that they should not give back more than 10%, maybe as much as 15%, of their portfolio value when the stock market goes in the tank. That occurs on a regular basis. Declines in equities of 20% to 40% happen regularly and no customer should be mesmerized into holding during those periods.

During the 2000-2001 period there were less than 3% recommendations by brokers to sell and those sells were after the stock had crashed about 80% to 90%. It is too late then. Your money is gone. If brokers and financial planners had been taught to advise people to place 10% stop loss orders their retirement accounts they would be much fatter today.

Stop doing the same thing over and over again because of bad advice. Learn to sell when your position goes negative. Don’t be one of the insane.

Al Thomas’ book, "If It Doesn’t Go Up, Don’t Buy It!" has helped thousands of people make money and keep their profits with his simple 2-step method. Read the first chapter at http://www.mutualfundmagic.com and discover why he’s the man that Wall Street does not want you to know.

Copyright 2005

al@mutualfundstrategy.com; 1-888-345-7870

Posted on Jan 10th, 2008

I have a 2-car garage. There are nice shelves on one side and a good practical workbench with a vice on the other side. Plenty of room for 2 cars yet I have to be careful when I pull in so I won’t run over stuff stacked on each side. Sound familiar?

Kinda reminds me of the investment portfolio of many people. Full of junk. If I threw out almost all of that stuff I really wouldn’t miss it. For whatever crazy reason I still have a stock certificate of 100 shares for a copper mine in Cuba. You know how much that is worth. Fortunately, I don’t have any of those now defunct dot.com company shares.

Oh, I did own a lot of technology issues in 1999 and into 2000, but when they started down I put in my stop-loss orders and someone bought them from me. I sure hope he still doesn’t have them. Some have no value at all now and others are worth less than 10% of their high prices. I remember Priceline.com when it went to $104 and then took a nosedive to $2.00. I even made a nice profit in the mutual fund Janus 20 that took off from $40 and went to $93. Today it is $37. The Buy and Hold crowd have become the Buy and Prey people. Needless to say your broker did not call you to sell out with a profit. No, he said, "Don’t worry the market always comes back". Maybe not in your lifetime.

I have not been very careful about keeping the junk out of my garage, but I have not collected many pretty stock certificates that have no value. Once each month I have taken about 15 minutes to see what is going on with my money. That is what is supposed to take care of me when I do not choose to work any more and I know Social Security is not going to be enough.

When that bull market was raging I made sure that I was not going to give back the profits I made. I placed following loss limits on each of my securities every month. You really should do it weekly, but I did not seem to have the time. A good friend of mine taught me to place what is called Good ‘Til Cancelled Stop-Loss Orders. The are also called GTC stop orders. This has been the difference in my having more money in my retirement account today. If I had not done this I would have less than half of what I have now. Don’t let that happen to you.

If you have a lot of worthless securities or those that are still going down I think you should give serious consideration to cleaning out that portfolio and putting those funds in a cash money market account until you can find something that will make you some money.

You can live with a messy garage, but you can’t live with no money in your retirement account. Clean out the weak ones now before they become worthless.

Al Thomas’ book, "If It Doesn’t Go Up, Don’t Buy It!" has helped thousands of people make money and keep their profits with his simple 2-step method. Read the first chapter at http://www.mutualfundmagic.com and discover why he’s the man that Wall Street does not want you to know.

Copyright 2005

al@mutualfundstrategy.com; 1-888-345-7870

Posted on Jan 7th, 2008

With an insecure job market, overworked employees, insufficient retirement savings and parents wanting the option to stay home with their kids, it is not surprising that many individuals are taking the leap into online business opportunities.

The need to create a secondary income is a smart move for people who recognize the risks associated with the traditional job market. However, there are questions: What are some of the options out there? And how can you avoid losing money to ‘get rich quick’ schemes or unproven business ideas?

"You Want to Make Money On the Internet? Get In Line"

The truth is there ARE many options for you. In fact, you may have had the typical learning experience of many who are exploring the touted ‘gold rush’ of online income opportunities. Many systems that are promoted require a learning curve that can cost more than an individual can afford, in time, money and energy.

Another problem many encounter is the need to invest in product, create a marketing system, and compete with the many other online entrepreneurs that are selling the same or similar products.

Regardless of your experience, however, there is an option that is making it possible for ordinary individuals to master a business that removes these obstacles. Mothers, retirees and even graduates looking for work can spend several hours online and bring home a real income.

"Money Makes the World Go Round"

I certainly don’t tout this as a personal philosophy. In fact many who look for online income do so because they are concerned about quality of life, not possessions. But the fact remains that money exchanges hands every day and this does indeed make the economy move.

Consider what many would consider to be a safe system of financing your future: investments. Regardless of whether you invest in real estate, art, antiques or any other valuable, you count on the return being greater than the investment.

Take a look at this from another angle: investing in stock is an investment in a valuable that you anticipate trading at a greater value. Without knowledge of how the stock market works, many would caution against this as a dangerous and risky move.

However, with the proper training, many ordinary individuals have learned a process that allows them to trade within a few hours, create amazing income, and do so without the risk and cost involved in typical trading.

Imagine the possibility of making $1100 in profits in under an hour. Imagine $3000. I can prove it can be done. What amount of selling would you have to do with M.L.M. or information products to achieve results like that? How much time would you need to invest in creating an effective marketing campaign? What if you didn’t have to do either? Would you want to know how?

"Is This Something I Could Do?"

Absolutely! The ability to take advantage of stock market fluctuations may seem like the complicated process that only a university educated graduate could achieve. However, with the proper training, you could learn to day trade using a simple formula that anyone can master. I know what I’m talking about here; in fact, my own background was in construction - a far cry from Wall Street!

Unlike other businesses, the benefits of learning to day trade can be put to work immediately. With a brief education and knowledge of how the system works, day trading becomes a low risk option that can be extremely affordable and easy to execute.

If you are like many others, you don’t want to waste another dollar or hour on learning complicated programs that fail to deliver. Day trading means no more hassles with marketing, customers or products. In fact, with the proper training, you can be making profits 80-95% of the time. You simply follow the progress of the market for a few hours and act when you see the ideal scenarios. Sound simple enough?

Understanding why some people make money and others don’t is the key to avoiding costly pitfalls in any business. With the proper knowledge and support, day trading can be the smartest move towards financial independence that you can make today. Can you afford not to consider this?

Please watch for my next article “Day Trading: Is This The Perfect Home Business?” for more information on this exciting business.

About the author:

Michael S.L. Bombard, an accomplished 4 year online marketer, wants to rush you a free copy of his fact- filled PDF report that reveals the simple system he’s using to generate massive profits online. Go now to: http://www.daytradetycoon.com/freereport.html

Posted on Jan 4th, 2008

Just about everything you have been told about Social Security is an obfuscation. That is a big word for convoluted truth or lie.

In a recently published obscure government document by the presidential Social Security commission there are two pages that expose the truth. Neither Democrats nor Republicans want you to read this. Shining the light of truth on the weirdness of politicians seldom makes them happy; however, you owe to yourself to know the truth.

When they take out from your paycheck for FICA - that’s the SS deduction - the money is sent to the Social Security Trust Fund. Your money is held in the fund for some future date when it is returned to you upon retirement. During that time it is gaining interest at about 2%. Pretty shabby, but better than nothing. This is all well and good as long as the money is really there, but it isn’t. What?

Now follow me with this beautiful bit of political sleight of hand. The money is invested in U.S. Treasury bills. Good, sound and safe as it gets. Right? Wait. Let’s understand what has happened here. The Federal government has issued pieces of paper called Treasury bills which they have created out of thin air and replaced your real money. The Fed has borrowed your money in the "trust fund" and given you a promissory note in the form of a Treasury Bill. That money has now been transferred to the General Fund where our honest politicians spend it on whatever piece of pork they want. That does include necessities such the Army, Navy and Marines, welfare recipients and government employees like Senators and Congressmen.

Let’s jump ahead to your retirement date maybe 20 or 30 years from now. You and thousands like you have been putting in billions for all these years and Uncle has been printing T-Bills. Now you want your money back. Shucks, anyone knows you just cash in the T-Bills. Where does the money come from for the T-bill? From the government that created it. That means those funds must come back out of the General Fund, which is composed of taxes. But they already spent it. It’s gone. Something is wrong here.

The Fed took your money and put a piece of paper in its place as a promise to pay when the time came, but they did not back it up with anything except a promise to pay. All returns to SS retirees comes back out of payments by others now paying into SS. But what if there is less money being deducted for FICA at that time? It is called a shortfall. What the Fed has created is a giant Ponzie scheme where the first people who invested in it get paid, but those who came in later get less, little or maybe nothing.

As long as there is a Federal surplus or a balanced budget you are OK, but when that disappears it means taxes on everyone must be raised to pay for the SS benefits. Smoke and mirrors.

Politicians don’t want you to be able to invest any of your own money because it means they will have less to spend and could care less what happens 10, 20 or 30 years from now as they will be long gone.

That is the truth about your Social Security "Trust Fund". There isn’t any and never has been.

Perhaps we were asking the wrong questions this past election.

Our Senators/Congressmen do not pay into Social Security, and therefore they do not collect from it. Social Security benefits were not suitable for them.

They felt they should have a special plan. Many years ago they voted in their benefit plan. In more recent years, no congressperson has felt the need to change it. After all, it is a great plan. For all practical purposes, their plan works like this:

When they retire, no matter how long they have been in office, they continue to draw their same pay until they die, except that it may be increased from time to time by the cost-of-living adjustments. For example, former Senator Bill Bradley (New Jersey) and his wife may be expected to draw $7,900,000 over an average life span, with Mrs. Bradley drawing $275,000.00 during the last year of her life. Their cost for this excellent plan is zero, nada, zilch.This little perk they voted in for themselves is free to them.

You and I pick up the tab for this plan. Our tax dollars at work! From Social Security, which you and I pay into every payday for our own retirement, with an equal amount paid in by our employer, we can expect to receive an averageof $1,000 per month. We would have to collect our benefits for 68 years and 1month to equal the Bradley’s benefits.

Imagine for a moment that you could structure a retirement plan so desirable, that worked so well, that Railroad Employees, Postal Workers,and others who were not in the plan would clamor to be included. This is how good Social Security could be, if only one small change were made.

That change would be to jerk the Golden Fleece Retirement Plan out from under the Congressmen & Senators. Put them into the Social Security plan with the rest of us. Watch how fast they fix it!

If enough people receive this message, maybe a seed will be planted and maybe good changes will evolve.

Our girl Hillary Rodham Clinton now comes under this Congressional Retirement Plan. Sspeaking of the Clinton’s, it’s common knowledge that in order for her to establish NY State residency, they purchased a $million-plus house in upscale Chappaqua, NY. Makes sense.

Now, they are entitled to Secret Service protection for life. Still makes sense. Here is where it becomes interesting. A residence had to be built in order to house the Secret Service agents. The Clintons now charge the Secret Service rent for the use of said residence and that rent is just about equal to their mortgage payment, meaning that we, the tax payers, are paying the Clinton’s mortgage.

And it’s all perfectly legal.

Al Thomas’ book, "If It Doesn’t Go Up, Don’t Buy It!" has helped thousands of people make money and keep their profits with his simple 2-step method. Read the first chapter at http://www.mutualfundmagic.com and discover why he’s the man that Wall Street does not want you to know.

Copyright 2005

Posted on Jan 1st, 2008

Ever turn down a street, get half way and suddenly realize it is one way and you are going the wrong way? Is that the way you feel when you look at your stock brokerage statement?

In either case don’t panic. You can get out of that one way street by carefully backing out. Recouping your stock market losses also means you must back out. Many people lost 50% of their investment in the last year because they were going the wrong way and could not back out. You must admit you are doing it wrong and stop immediately just as you did in your car. In a car you have been taught there is a reverse gear so you know how to get out of this bad situation. No one has ever taught you how to extricate yourself from a losing position in the stock market - certainly not your broker and most financial planners don’t know either.

Let’s look first at how you got here. You bought stocks or mutual funds without an exit plan. I’ll put it away "for the long haul" and won’t worry about it. The nicest thing I can say about that type of investing is "STUPID". You have an exit plan for the one way street; now you need an exit plan for your remaining money. It is the same. Back out. You have to acknowledge you are doing it wrong. Hiding from this mistake means you will continue to lose money. Do you want to do that or would you rather find a solution to not losing money again?

O.K., you have looked in the mirror and you say I am ready. Look at that brokerage statement and sell every loser you have. Every one! This takes emotional courage. Do it. Now you have cash. Don’t do anything until you have a plan and that plan has an absolute, set-in-concrete foundation: never buy any stock or mutual fund unless I limit my risk from the day I purchase it. One of the best rules is a 10% Good Until Cancelled Stop-Loss Order. Brokers hate these because it means they will have to check your account daily. Don’t believe him when he says, "Don’t worry, I will watch your account". He won’t. It is not his money.

Using this very simple technique you will never lose large sums of money. Also as your stock moves up you raise (never lower) the stop-loss order each week following it 10% under each Friday’s closing price until you are eventually taken out of the position with a profit or, at worst, a small loss. The stock itself will tell you when to sell when it turns weak.

You have been driving for a lot of years and have gotten out of some tight places. Now you know how to not lose money in the stock market. Back out. Do it today. Put in your stops.

Al Thomas’ book, "If It Doesn’t Go Up, Don’t Buy It!" has helped thousands of people make money and keep their profits with his simple 2-step method. Read the first chapter at http://www.mutualfundmagic.com and discover why he’s the man that Wall Street does not want you to know.

Copyright 2005

Posted on Dec 25th, 2007

It is wonderful to be alive in the information age. We know in a matter of seconds the change in the value of gold in Switzerland, the death of a world leader or the birth of a peasant in Israel.

We are inundated with facts and figures and the emotional tribulations of both famous and infamous people. Can we possibly assimilate all this? Does it help us in our daily lives?

When you begin to analyze it you realize all this information is just an agglomeration of stuff and contains no wisdom. If you were to memorize the Encyclopedia Britannica would that make you wise? Not really. You might know all about everything and you could answer questions on any subject, but unless you could correlate the facts and understand their interaction it would be of not much use at all.

I am in the financial industry. Would it help me to make more money to have memorized the Morningstar Manual? Oh, I would know the PE ratios and earnings of every company and a lot more, but will all that information tell me if the price of a company’s stock will go up? Again, not really.

Wall Street has the public believing the myth that you must do research; find out everything about a company, its competitors and that industry. Now that you have done that and all the figures say that according to conventional wisdom this is a "good" company does that mean the stock price will go up? Not really. When you do your historical study you will find there is hardly any correlation in price appreciation and the fact it is a "good" company.

Financial research is worthless. If it were wisdom everyone would be rich.

The reason Wall Street brokerage companies insist you do nonsense research is so you won’t sue them when their "recommendations" don’t make you any money. There is only one thing you really need to know. Is the price of the stock steadily going up? The simple way to do this is to check the weekly closing price for the past several years. You can get this data at the library. If it has a nice steady upward path what more do you need to know? Everything that is known about this company is reflected in the last price transaction. In that price you are seeing all the world’s research.

Information per se is not wise. It is the intelligent application of information that is wisdom. Apply your own common sense wisdom. Don’t listen to Wall Street.

Al Thomas’ book, "If It Doesn’t Go Up, Don’t Buy It!" has helped thousands of people make money and keep their profits with his simple 2-step method. Read the first chapter at http://www.mutualfundmagic.com and discover why he’s the man that Wall Street does not want you to know.

Copyright 2005

Posted on Dec 24th, 2007

I don’t know what kind it is, but I saw it on TV running full speed along the shore (I don’t live near the shore) throwing up spray or maybe it was that one climbing up the steep mountain trail thru the mud, rocks and snow. Very exciting. (I don’t live near the mountains either.) WOW! Just what I need.

But there are a few obstacles.

It costs about $28,000. (That’s close to the average annual wage.) I have perfect credit and they’ll give it to me for no money down. All I have to do is make the monthly payments for the next 5 years of only $541. Maybe it won’t be that much because I’ll be trading in my car and I have it almost paid for it.

I can see me now headed for the beach or climbing that mountain in that shiny new car.

I tell my wife.

She says, “So”.

I say, “Waddayamean ‘so’?”

She elaborates that our car is almost paid for and hasn’t a scratch on it. It looks like new when it is washed and waxed and runs great. She whacks me with if I want a different car we can have this one repainted and put on new slip covers. The transmission and AC have both been replaced and it has less than 100,000 miles on it. She remembers the engine is rated for 200,000 miles and the tires are good for another 50,000 miles. How does she recall those statistics? I can’t win for losing with this woman.

There is a tone in her voice that I know means finality when she iterates, “You might want a new car, but we don’t need one”. My reply is the car might break down and may cost thousands to fix”. Her lightning reply, “Well, it won’t cost $28,000 and our insurance bill won’t go up either. If you want payments you can make an extra mortgage payment each month. Better yet let’s knock down that credit card debt.”

I hear the air hissing out of my balloon. No beach. No mountains. Forget all that practical stuff like saving for retirement or having some extra cash put away for emergencies. Damn.

BUT - my neighbor has a new car.

Al Thomas’ best selling book, "If It Doesn’t Go Up, Don’t Buy It!" has helped thousands of people make money and keep their profits with his simple 2-step method. Read the first chapter and receive his market letter at http://www.mutualfundmagic.com and discover why he’s the man that Wall Street does not want you to know. Copyright 2005

Posted on Dec 12th, 2007

Reach in your pocket and take out that big roll of bills. Depending on how many of them you have you feel pretty good. BUT did you know they are not worth the paper they are printed on? Huh? Let me explain.

Yes, those bills are legal tender because those guys in Washington passed a law stating they must be accepted for payment. They are Federal Reserve Notes and it states right on the bill, “This is legal tender for all debts, public and private”. That is OK, but if you go to the U.S. Mint will they redeem it in gold or silver? Years ago they did, but not since 1971.

Almost everyone has bought stock in a company. The company issues shares and each share represents a portion of the ownership in that company. It is against the best interests of the stockholders to issue additional shares unless something of equal value is added. Why? Let’s keep it very simple. Suppose the company is worth $100,000 and it has issued 100,000 shares of stock. The stock has a book value of $1.00 per share. If the officers of the company decide to issue another 100,000 shares to hire security guards (like soldiers), lease (not buy) an airplane, increase the accounting staff (these folks do not increase production) and pay the executives more (who will produce the same amount as they are now) you will notice that all these expenses do not add to the company’s profits. The value of all shares is now 50 cents per share because the value of the company has remained the same. $100,000 divided by 200,000 shares is 50 cents per share.

What has all that to do with your money? You have seen in the paper that the Federal Reserve Bank (it is neither Federal nor maintains a reserve) has had an auction for Treasury Bills. Sir Alan Greenspan has authorized the printing of those T-Bills. With just paper and ink he has created billions of dollars of debt for the government. And who is the government? YOU. Each time the Fed turns on the printing presses to sell government bonds it effectively dilutes the value of the money you have. That is called inflation. Unless the productivity rate of the country increases by a like amount it devalues your currency.

Should you care? What it amounts to is everything will cost more because your money represents less. This is monetary inflation and has nothing to do with the supply of goods. Yet some day (who knows when) those bonds will have to be redeemed. The idea of the central government is to keep watering down the money so they can pay off the debt with cheaper and cheaper dollars. This is a method of creating money instead of raising taxes yet you are paying for it.

Throughout history there have been scores of private and government banks that have issued fake (fiat) money and in every case they have failed and the holders of the fake money have lost. Will that happen this time? I would not bet against it.

Al Thomas’ book, "If It Doesn’t Go Up, Don’t Buy It!" has helped thousands of people make money and keep their profits with his simple 2-step method. Read the first chapter at http://www.mutualfundmagic.com and discover why he’s the man that Wall Street does not want you to know.

Copyright 2005

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