Resveratrol

All I know is that I am going to Walgreens to buy some of this goodness, maybe if I start at age 21 I might be able to stay healthy and live into my 100s

Municipal Solar Financing

So I stumbled upon this idea the other day while reading an article about New Jersey and it becoming one of the greenest states in America. The idea behind this financing is that the state and local governments will loan an individual the amount needed to retrofit their house/garage/shed with solar panels; then the municipalities would assess a special tax upon the property over 25 years to recoup their investment/loan in your property. I think this is a great alternative for those who want to live more green but don't want to or can't get a loan from traditional sources. I hope that Wisconsin and other states follow this initiative!

Free Money from the Banks

Bank of America is offering a $100 bonus for new checking account customers, both personal and business.

Get $75 when you open a new qualifying personal or business checking account with a $250 deposit and make a purchase with your debit card.

Get an additional $25 when you make 2 online bill payments within 30 days. Business checking customers can pay 2 bills with our Small Business Online Banking Bill Pay service or use the Online Business Suite® Direct Payments service

Check It out on bankofamerica.com

Randomness

I am but a student aspiring to reach higher, to become a businessman through which I will exemplify the values of charity, goodwill, and hope. I will not be put down by the struggles ahead but will rise to the occasion, to face the challenge head on. I will not accept defeat, accepting nothing less than the passion of pursuit. You can never be the person you want to be if you are always looking back, behind your shoulder to what could have been!

Define Love, What is It?

Love is but an illusion. A simple "I love you" and a peck on the cheek is all it takes. Today there is a lack of true emotional connection and affection replaced by the inner desire to receive pleasure and dominate. The Bible often speaks of agape love, true love, the love where one would sacrifice him r herself in order to ensure the well being and preservation of their loved one. If love were the basis and foundation of modern relationship there would be no need for bitterness or envy. Instead the relationship would bud and eventually blossom into all of its glory. Mankind sighs at this analogy as old school, "wake up it is the 21st century!" To hold this belief is to hold that love is only relevant in relevant situations, this my friends, as we know, could not be further from the truth. Love in its pure form outlasts even the toughest struggles and battles. But man has made love relevant thus it is only as strong as one's desire to stay together. "Don't forget to wear a glove!"
I mean is that not sad, I think that a gift that is so precious and meaningful that has been reduced to so little is just down right wrong.

All About Me

Well I am pretty easy-going, I love life and hanging out with friends. I am conservative both politically and socially, some call it rigid or stuck-up but I call it polite and thoughtful of those around me. I tend to have my guards up but it is always better to play it safe then to let your guard down and get hurt because of it. I don’t believe in changing yourself or conforming to others because in the end those people will leave you and make you feel like crap. I am caring and full of love, so much so that I want to share it with the world through volunteering and helping out with anything as much as possible. I love doing charity work because I truly feel like I am helping change the world, even if it is only one person. To me charity isn’t about feeling pity for someone, instead it is about sharing your love of life with someone. I sponsor a child, Diana Marisol Peralta Rivera, through Compassion International and it is a joy to do so. I feel so happy and full of life every time I open a letter from her and see the drawings that see has sent to me or the pictures of her face all lit up when she receives a present. To me that is what life is about, not about how many possessions can I have or covet but how much of a difference I can make by simply caring about others. My friends would describe me as easy-going and chill although a little shy. I get frustrated with people who are selfish and careless because when ever you are around them all it is, is self-made drama. Lastly, I am focused and determined, however hopelessly a procrastinator; something of which I still quiet don’t understand.

Bilderberg, Council on Foreign Relations and Trilateral Commission

The current market based cap and trade of carbon emission and production, proposed by President Obama as a way to "move America into the 21st century" and to challenge the "effects of global warming" is pseudo science at its best. This system will increase taxes on virtually everything from the manufacturing/industrial sector of our economy to the energy sector, from car and gas prices to value-added taxes on plastics....Wake up people, cap and trade will not stop global warming! In the last thousand years we had several "warming and cooling" periods, one such period was called the Mideval Warm Period, there is also evidence of correlation between global temperatures and increased solar activity, additionally these permits are purchased to allow carbon emission while setting up a commodity platform that will investment banks and other large institutional investors hedge bets and create futures that will result in billions of dollars in profit. The goal is not to help the citizens of America and the world at large but to wage a new tax system that will only cripple the middle class. If we want true reform than instate across-the-broad subsidies that make energy saving appliances economically competitive against their competitors. It was once thought that Americans would never want an electric car, remember the EV1, and yet with a focus on the consumers and a slew of new features/advancements the time for electric based vehicles has ripened. Several people think that "Big Oil" are the evil dictators of the world, yet these companies are heavily invested in renewable resources such as biofuels, solar, wind, algae-based energy production, etc... T. Boone Pickens is a prime example, he made his first billion with oil and is now waiting to make his next with renewable resources such as wind and solar. I fully support America's "Green Initiatives" but call for action to be made by American citizens not politicians, who would financially benefit from such policy initiatives (think Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi), and multi-billion dollar corporations. The only person who has your best interest in mind is yourself!

The title of my blog consists of three entities that include among its members only the world's most powerful and wealthy. The following is a quote is from David Rockefeller Senior's 2002 autobiography “Memoirs.” On page 405, Mr. Rockefeller writes: “For more than a century ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents such as my encounter with Castro to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as "internationalists" and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure - one world, if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it." Mr. Rockefeller was a director on the Council on Foreign Relations. I suggest that you "google" or "bing" these three entities and do a little reading to see how influential these groups are and how many members are our American politicians.

Big Money Buying and Holding Oil

"So far some 62 million barrels of gas oil and jet fuel are being stored in vessels off Europe due to poor global demand and to take advantage of an ongoing contango market -- where prices for fuel for delivery in future months is higher than now (http://www.cnbc.com/id/31793660)." While I do not and will not speak against capitalism, I do think that it benefits no one to allow large investment banks buy and hold oil until oil prices rise and then pocket the gain. America's rules pertaining to the market allow the rich to get richer and at the same time the small guy has only a small amount of capital, so in order to earn only a few bucks the small guy has to sacrifice part of his disposable income to invest. If investment banks can hold oil tankers, why doesn't America herself buy large amounts of oil, over stockpile her refineries and strategic fund, and then when prices to rise cash out the investments and return the profits to Americans through tax refunds or use the profits to pay down the deficit.

If oil hits $200, globalization becomes localization, author says

If oil hits $200, globalization becomes localization, author says

Globalization, basically international trade and the transfer of jobs to lower-cost centers, shifted into fifth gear during the recent economic expansion, with record hemisphere-to-hemisphere business.

Moreover, while economists expect trade to rev-up again as the global economic recovery starts, one economist is arguing that globalization's second wave will be short. Author Jeff Rubin, former chief economist for CIBC World Markets in Toronto, expects oil prices to hit $200 per barrel in the next economic expansion, throwing globalization into reverse, and sparking a re-birth of 'localization,' or locally-produced goods.

Rubin argues as much in his compelling book, "Why Your World Is About To Get A Whole Lot Smaller – Oil and the end of globalization." (New York: Random House, $26.)

Have we seen the end of cheap oil?

Investors should not casually dismiss Rubin. He accurately predicted that oil would hit $50 per barrel in 2005 and $100 in 2007. Further, Rubin does not believe the bulk of oil's record run to $147.27 in the summer of 2008 was the result of excess leverage or turbo-charged hedge funds in search of return, but stemmed from the inability of global oil supply increases to keep pace with rising global demand. Oil fell 31 cents Tuesday at mid-day to $67.19 per barrel.

Further, the current U.S. and global recessions, as investors might sense, have only created a temporary reprieve from sky-high oil prices, Rubin argues. And it's those future sky-high oil prices that are about to make your world a whole lot smaller, he theorizes. Basically, Rubin contends that the global economy requires cheap oil: it's what makes it profitable to ship raw materials to China to have them processed into cheap electronics products, clothes, furniture, and much of what else consumers buy. With cheap oil, low-wage countries have a competitive advantage. Enter $100, $150, and then $200 per barrel oil and developed economies with higher-wage employees become competitive again, Rubin argues.

"Many of those high-paying manufacturing jobs that we thought we had lost forever to cheap labor markets overseas may be soon coming back home," Rubin writes. Here's one example: steel made in the United States became cheaper than steel imported from China in 2007 -- the first time that's happened in more than 10 years.

A brand new dance: the local-motion

Economist Peter Dawson, whose specializations include energy, agrees with Rubin that persistent $150-plus oil prices would throw globalization into reverse for many products and services, but he's not in total agreement about the economic and public/private policy responses to those oil prices.

"Without question, oil at $200 would lead to localization taking away from global trade. It simply would cost too much to manufacturer many products and ship them half way around the world. Clothes would be one consumer item that would return to the U.S., as would light manufacturing," Dawson said. "And needless to say it would lead to massive adjustments in spatial geography and urban planning. Most everyone would start to live closer to work, or choose work locations closer to home, where possible."

"Where I disagree with Rubin is in the underplaying of innovation, conservation, and energy substitutes," Dawson said. "At sustained oil prices above $100 per barrel, the push, already on for substitutes, will intensify, as will the push for highly efficient transportation, from cars, to buses, to ocean-traveling container ships."

For the reasons of conservation and energy substitution, Dawson sees high oil prices shifting some production back to higher-cost zones such as the United States and European Union, "but not the end of globalization, of lower-cost production centers." Development of emerging economies would continue, Dawson said, with considerable job transfer to lower-cost centers.

Rubin addresses both the conservation and alternate fuels variables in his book, but argues that they won't be enough to avoid 'Oil Shock IV,' to go along with the shocks of 1973-74, 1979-80, 2007-8. Oil supply increases will not be able to keep pace with rising demand for oil in emerging markets, particularly in China, India, and Latin America.

Oil / Economic Analysis: Put Rubin firmly in the camp that argues that energy from oil will present a price/cost problem for most petroleum consuming nations. Further, how unreasonable is Rubin's prediction of $200 oil? At the start of the decade, it would have been categorized as 'a near-fringe' analysis. But after last year's $147 high, and oil's ability to vault 100% in less than six months - a macroeconomic eye-blink - to $72 from $36, its plausible to see oil prices well above $100 during the next global economic expansion. Add geopolitical risk (primarily in Iraq, Nigeria, Venezuela, and Iran) and one can construct a scenario of a world with sustained oil prices above $150. That would push average U.S. gasoline prices well over $4 per gallon nationally, with heating oil well over $3.50, propelling a series of consumer, residential, and commercial changes.

The key critique of Rubin's argument concerns the role that increased fuel efficiency and energy substitutes will play once oil reaches sustained prices above $100, then $150. Rubin argues they won't change the localization trend, whereas economist Dawson and I differ, but we both still recommend Rubin's book, as it walks investors/readers through the consequences for the nation, if it does not follow-through on its current public policy trend to become more energy efficient and less dependent on oil.

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The Door Shuts for GM and Chrysler on Energy Efficiency Funds

Thank God! The government has restrained itself when dividing up energy efficiency loans to automakers. What was thought to be a sure thing, giving Chrysler and GM billions of additional taxpayer dollars to revamp factories to make energy-efficient cars, has been shattered. Today the U.S. government stated that GM and Chrysler would be void from this program, instead giving money to both Nissan and the better of the three, Ford Motor Company.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/23/business/23car.html?_r=1&ref=business