The United Free States of America

The world doesn’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Author Unknown

http://www.smartmoney.com/breaking-news/on/?story=ON-20100902-000458

Check out the link above… Something about this makes me uneasy, if I read the article correctly the treasury is creating savings accounts as retail products. Like with all of these sorts of things the idea behind it is noble, but its just another way the governments is growing exponentially. How does a private bank that has a bunch of regulations about what it can can not do with their products compete with the Federal Reserve which can basically do what ever it pleases. Just one more example of us slowly losing our freedom for convenience sake.

So this week I am attending a conference in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia with leaders from World Vision and some subject matter experts.  Its been a very educational experience and I thought it might be helpful to share some thoughts/quotes/ideas I’ve been pondering.

- In Africa solar power will be to energy what mobile phones have been to telecom.
From Paul Collier who has worked with the IMF and Central Banks throughout Africa.

- Who owns undiscovered natural resources in a country?  Since natural resources are clustered should the revenues created by their extraction benefit all the citizens of a country via tax revenue?  Should natural resources be taxed differently than made made goods?

Dave

“We teach children to save their money. As an attempt to counteract thoughtless and selfish expenditure, that has value. But it is not positive; it does not lead the child into the safe and useful avenues of self-expression or self-expenditure. To teach a child to invest and use is better than to teach him to save.”

HENRY FORD, My Life and Work

“Although all men are born free, slavery has been the general lot of the human race. Ignorant – they have been cheated; asleep – they have been surprised; divided – the yoke has been forced upon them. But what is the lesson? …the people ought to be enlightened, to be awakened, to be united, that after establishing a government they should watch over it…. It is universally admitted that a well-instructed people alone can be permanently free.”

James Madison

Excerpt from:

Federal Spending by the Numbers 2010

Published on June 1, 2010 by Brian Riedl Special Report #78

“The 2010 edition of “Federal Spending by the Numbers” shows spending and deficits continuing to grow at a pace not seen since World War II. Washington will spend $30,543 per household in 2010—$5,000 per household more than just two years ago. While some of this spending is a temporary result of the recession, President Obama’s latest budget would replace this temporary spending with permanent new programs. Consequently, by 2020—a time of assumed peace and prosperity—Washington would still spend nearly $36,000 per household, compared to $25,000 per household before this recession (adjusted for inflation).”

Follow the link for the full research report.

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2010/06/Federal-Spending-by-the-Numbers-2010

A new series… Dave and I have been wondering what the heck can fill 2000 pages of legislation (healthcare, stimulus, Financial Reform, etc). So as we start to figure that out we will try to post that here.

And the first in the series… A ridiculous requirement for small business…

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/gold-coin-dealers-decry-tax-law/story?id=11211611

In honor of the 2300 page financial “reform” bill.

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

Theodore Roosevelt said those words one hundred years ago at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1910.