DISTURBING DEVELOPMENTS (GEITNER PLAN)

Is there anything in this auction plan that prohibits the sellers to finance the buyers? After all, the sellers are big banks and that's what they are designed to do: finance profitable enterprise.

What if a bank A enters a contract with a financial entity B, such that for every dollar that B spends at the auction, A offers it a free dollar in credit with loose return requirement. Then B carries practically zero risk and is interested in gobbling as much of the toxic asset as possible, driving the auction price way beyond the fair value (whatever that is). For every extra dollar that is spent at the auction, bank A collects 12 dollars from the government, so the dollar it gave away (to B) is not a factor. Both sides are pulling an arbitrage of a lifetime, at the expense of the taxpayer. The price could easily go even above 100 cents on a dollar. Of course, this would attract unwanted scrutiny and public outrage, so the parties (banks and government) instead would just agree on mutually acceptable prices. To make it a “success”, Geithner would have to agree on banks' asking price, just like the initial TARP plan: direct subsidy to the banks, only under the cover of the “auction-fair-value” fig leaf and with fewer strings attached, it seems.

So what would preclude such a scenario? Even if banks are prohibited to finance the buyers directly, isn't there always a way to create the same contract through multiple intermediaries and complex derivative instruments? Too difficult? As long as it's legal, with hundreds of billions of free dollars on the table, the smart people of Wall St. will surely not miss the chance.

Watch this video particularly towards the end:

Is the financial community double dipping the Bail Out money?

One of the central themes of the current financial crisis is the mismanagement of Credit Default Swaps (CDS). CDS policies were issued indiscriminately without setting aside adequate reserves to cover potential claims.



CDS’s are insurance contracts that enabled banks to acquire the assets, collateralized debt obligations or CDO’s, which now supposedly have all become toxic. A CDS was supposed to protect the banks against a default of a CDO. If a CDO went bad/toxic the issuer of CDS insurance would pay the bank the full value of the CDO.

AIG is the biggest issuer of these insurance policies (CDS) for which it had insufficient reserves to be able to cover if all the claims started pouring in.



Well, unfortunately the claims started pouring in due to the defaults of CDO’s (toxic assets) that these CDS policies covered.

To stop AIG from going bankrupt on account of its inability to pay all these claims, the government bailout so far has given them $300 billion of tax payers’ money with no end in sight.

This $300 billion is rapidly used to satisfy the claims that financial institutions, including banks have on these policies.



Unless of course the banks were so stupid not to insure their risky Collateralized Debt Obligations CDO’s by taking out CDS policies,these CDO’s are covered. So why are so many of these CDO’s toxic?

So if the now roughly $300 billion bailout of AIG is used to pay the claims on credit default swaps to the banks. And those same banks are being propped up by a trillion dollar government bailout package because initially the banks would not be able to collect the credit default swap claims from a bankrupt AIG when in fact they can because the government is paying AIG the money to do so.

Is someone here double dipping? Or is something more sinister going on, like the AIG money going somewhere else?

Bou van Kuyk

THE MARKET “EXPERTS” SPEAK OUT

On the bail out no less! Are you kidding me? CNBC the cable program that supposedly helped people navigate the markets while their proxy’s were profiting from it.



Just look at some of their line up! Jim Cramer, Rick Santelli, Mark Haines.

What do you think Cramer was all about? He lured naïve, inexperienced investors into buying his “favorite” stocks. “After hours” of course so they would not influence the market during the day. That’s right “after hours”, that is the key to this scam. The market still functions perfectly well “after hours” when the market is still in full swing for another two or three hours but without the big institutional investors, it is called extended hours so volume is lower and it is easier to manipulate.



Have you ever looked at a price of one of the stocks Cramer recommended “after hours” on his show? The price went up you will say of course and it did, but when did that price go up and who drove it up and when. Whenever I looked at the price of a stock he was recommending on a real time basis, even while his serenading of the stock was in progress, the price of that stock had already risen to such absurd proportions that I never bothered to get in.

That was the key! The stock had performed perfectly benign during the day but mysteriously rose in after hours trading even before Cramer recommended it! How is that possible you ask. Well first of all the program is taped earlier in the day, there is problem number one, number two I am convinced that these recommendations were designed to help “buddies” who happened to be in the stocks to make a profit or recoup their losses and get out. It is referred to as “pump and dump”

The stock market has since collapsed; I guess that takes care of Cramer.

Then there is Rick Santelli at the commodities exchange, leaving his caffeinated demeanor aside for the moment, we all thought that was his enthusiasm for the anal job he performed day in and day out. This guy managed to “explain” the wild fluctuations in the oil and other commodity prices by somehow relating them to supply and demand of oil and commodities, when all the while these prices were driven by derivatives! The supply and demand of derivatives determined the prices of these commodities which is why they tanked just like the economy when derivatives were identified as lethal weapons!



It took a CBS program like 60 minutes to explode the myth when they aired a program explaining the erratic swings in the price of oil and tied them to the supply and demand of derivatives driven by speculators; not the supply and demand of oil itself. In fact the price of oil should have come down during the period during which it went up to $140 if it had been based on the demand for real oil, the commodity.



The price of commodities and oil has since collapsed, I guess that takes care of Santelli

And now Haines has joined these idiots by pontificating about Obama’s housing plan, and how it teaches the American people bad behavior. Haines, a so called market “expert” who not once warned his viewers about the impending implosion of the entire housing market two years ago and its consequences. He did not understand the symptoms and never saw it coming! But he does understand the “bad” consequences of Obama’s plan? Be serious!

Where do these people find the nerve to preach to the people they have misguided for years; how dare they criticize a plan proposed by a man who has the best for American people at heart; have they no shame! They clearly have no knowledge of the market so what gives them the right to use their huge platform in such a ruthless and irresponsible manner?

They reveal themselves for what they are, low level followers and “crooks” but certainly not the sophisticated opinion makers that they try to make themselves out to be.

How to save $7,000

The Parallel, Enron and The current Financial Crisis.

I was watching 60 minutes the other evening which aired an episode about the rise and fall of oil prices and why they managed to go up and down in the erratic way that they did. Derivatives, the dirty word of our time came up again and again as the explanation for the apparent disconnect between energy prices and the supply and demand of energy.
The demand and supply for energy derivatives drove the price for energy up and down NOT the demand and supply for energy itself.

What was even more interesting and something I had forgotten about was that Enron was the “inventor” of these energy derivatives and had lobbied for the deregulation of the energy markets. This prompted me to revisit the Enron Story that I had read years ago and which is popularly referred to as “The smartest guys in the room”.



And this is where I noticed the parallel between the current financial crisis and the collapse of Enron. The familiar statement “fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me” applies perfectly here.

What struck me most was the sharp contrast between the action taken against the Enron chief executives and those taken against the executives of the current perpetrators even though many of the events show an uncanny parallel. Not to speak about the negligence of our current pompous congressional pontificators who were all there at that time indignantly questioning the Enron executives but never recognized the identical symptoms that caused the current malaise.

Yet to state that what the banking executives did to cause the demise of an entire nation was not far different from what the Enron executives did is an understatement.

Enron misled their stock holders about the company’s performance, so did the banks. They wiped out their shareholders equity and their employees 401k’s, so did the banks.

Enron used special purpose vehicles to hide losses, so did the banks. For example the Merrill Lynch transaction referred to as the “Lone Star Transaction” where Merrill sold a CDO at inflated prices to a special purpose vehicle which they financed with a loan from themselves. Most CDO’s were issued through special purpose vehicles taking the debt of the books of the banks. Most derivatives (CDO’s) on the banks books were artificially inflated, so were Enron’s



Enron’s Auditors Arthur Andersen and the Lawyers signed off on many of these Enron transactions, so did the auditors of the Banks. Worse, the rating agencies which the investment community relies on for valuing and rating debt were hand in glove with the banks and issued “flawed” ratings.

Enron artificially inflated energy prices through manipulation of the energy markets, so did the commodity exchanges and Warburg. How else can one explain a swing in energy prices of over 300% within three months?

The Enron executives “raped” the company thru bonuses and stock options, so did the banks. The banks with their collective reckless behavior put the lively hood of the entire planet at risk, Enron did not.

There is something really fishy in all this. What the Enron Executives did was considered to be criminal and they were sent to prison for extended periods of time. Why not the banking folks who have endangered an entire global economy with their unethical and reckless behavior?

It appears to me that there is a secret brotherhood that is protecting the “Wall Street” financial community. All the exact same things that Enron pioneered were replicated and imitated by Wall Street without impunity. The Special purpose vehicles pioneered by Enron’s CFO Andrew Fastow were subsequently used to issue CDO’s to take debt of the banks books and or distort valuations of existing assets, just like Enron did. It was a crime then, why not now?

Observing a Wall Street firm like Warburg taking over Enron trading, Enron’s most successful and profitable entity, within days of the Enron bankruptcy at a rock bottom price, reinforces the notion that there was a conspiracy in Wall Street to bring down a bunch of arrogant Texans that were beginning to threaten Wall Street’s monopoly. Especially considering that no one on Wall Street (Warburg) was prosecuted for not honoring Energy futures trade contracts with Enron Trading. Defaulting on these contracts is illegal in the futures markets and accelerated Enron’s insolvency and subsequent bankruptcy.

Why are there no congressional hearings on the scale of Enron for all those “crooked” bank executives that artificially inflated the world’s standard of living and threatened it with a bogus energy crisis? Are the people who are supposed to protect us from all these criminals afraid that we will see them for what they are? A criminally negligent bunch of pedantic pontificators.

There must be some mysterious invisible hand protecting Wall Street that we do not understand.

Given the uncanny parallel of events then and now, either the Executives of Wall Street should be prosecuted, punished and jailed, or the jail sentences of Skilling, Fastow et al should be greatly reduced. What was criminal then should be criminal now.

THE PEOPLES' BANK

Why are the “brains” of this world constantly redefining the problem? We know what the problem is, why don’t we come up with concrete proposals.

The problem is the banks, which were given in excess of $100 billion in Taxpayers money but are still not willing or able to help. $100 billion in Cash assets theoretically creates $1 trillion in credit, assuming a 10 to 1 leverage ratio; they were leveraged at 30 to 1!

Why are they not lending? Are their assets worth less than we thought and the money given them not sufficient to balance their books? Are they using that money to de-leverage? Or are they spending it on the wrong things? They are still paying out dividends and handing out bonuses!

On the other hand they are collecting up to 22% interest on credit card debt and over 7% on mortgages when the cost of money is less than 1%!

Whatever the problem, these traditional and apparently “failed” banks are not functioning and perhaps require a little encouragement by providing them with some competition.

The government should form 10 or more state banks with $100 billion or more of taxpayer’s money and make the Taxpayer stockholders of these banks, not the government, by issuing stock certificates in these new banks to each taxpayer.

The $100 billion or more would create credit facilities of roughly $1 trillion or more at a leverage ratio of 10 to 1 and would immediately unfreeze the credit markets.

These banks could lend to the auto industry amongst other things and take that monkey of the government’s back.

The taxpayer should receive a stock certificate in each of these banks. The banks would be run by reputable individuals including retirees; this would create employment.

The banks survival would be guaranteed by the government for a determined amount of time, say three years.

After a certain amount of time, say five years, these banks would be returned to the market through an IPO and capitalism would be restored and the taxpayers holding the stock certificates would get their money back and most probably make a decent profit.

This proposal has the following advantages and does the following things;

1)- Create new and competitive financial institutions that are not too big to fail and continue the mantra of creative destruction.
2)- Immediately unfreeze the credit markets and provide $1 Trillion or more in credit facilities and perhaps help the American automakers.
3)- Provide banking jobs to thousands of people.
4)- Maintain the capitalist system by providing the taxpayers with stock certificates and thus create oversight by taxpayers and not government.
5)- Ensure a return to the taxpayer by spinning these banks back to the open market through an IPO.

I realize this proposal is controversial and out of the box, but I firmly believe it is feasible and would be more effective than the current solutions of pouring good money after bad.

Alternatively Lets start our own PEOPLES' BANK

Thank you for providing this platform and look forward to your comments and or your support.

Bou van kuyk, Dallas, TX

BUY AMERICAN

Why do we keep bashing Detroit based on a number of myths?

Ford and GM are still two of the world’s largest and most successful automakers. They make and sell cars all over the world not just in the USA!

They do make good and reliable cars and have beaten foreign makes in quality and durability.

They do make Hybrids, the Ford Escape has been around before the Toyota Prius and more of the big three are launching new hybrids like the 60 MPG Ford F150.



They do not only make gas guzzlers, I drove a Ford Fiesta in Europe that did 65 miles to the gallon and there are US models like the Focus that are well above the average in miles per gallon.

They do make cars that Americans want. Unfortunately the American market wants large gas guzzlers like the SUV's. Every automaker in the world has been trying to bring successful SUV's to the American Market.

The government is blaming the big three for making cars that the market wants! This is what a capitalistic corporation is supposed to do; sell cars that people want and make a profit doing it!
It is true that the cost per automobile is too high, I am not sure though that the cost comparisons to foreign car makers is not an exercise in comparing apples and oranges.

Social costs of foreign labor are measured differently. Most foreign manufacturers have a government taking care of health care costs and pensions which are paid for by the taxpayer. The big three are all carrying the full burden of these costs (health care and pensions) that in most other countries are carried by the government.

The current problem of the big three is exacerbated by the current financial crisis. Credit is tight, it is hard for them to rollover/renew their credit lines and their ability to raise new capital has been greatly diminished by the precipitous decline in their share price.

The problems of the Detroit three is not a lack good, quality or fuel efficient cars that the people want, it is their burden of taking good care of their current and past employees and the current economic crisis; the government should help them.

Housing caused a Financial Problem, Greed and Stupidity made it a Crisis

There are derivatives and derivatives, most are clever instruments that are extremely efficient in generating leverage and spreading risk. It is in the way in which some of them were used that created the financial crisis.
Credit Default Swaps CDF’s:
Stupidity is issuing Credit Default Swaps insurance without setting aside any reserves.
Greed is accepting fees and payments for them without doing anything to legitimize their existence.
Stupidity is entirely relying on ratings and still not setting aside reserves to cover the risk of defaults.
Greed is allowing parties unrelated to a transaction to place side bets on defaults in order to receive fees and payments.
As a result of not setting aside reserves more CDF’s were issued than the issuers could possibly cover.
The taxpayers are now funding the liabilities of the issuers of these CDF’s (AIG and others) because the insurers were too greedy for fees and too stupid to set aside reserves when they should and could have.

Collateralized Debt Obligations CDO’s:
Stupidity is not balancing a portfolio by combining low risk/low interest CDO’s with high risk/high interest CDO’s.
Greed is having only high risk/high interest CDO’s to maximize returns without regard to the potential exposure of being wiped out.
As a result of this greed and stupidity the banks are holding worthless high risk/high interest CDO’s that have caused them to be greatly over leveraged and unable to lend.
The taxpayers are now funding the Banks that were overexposed to these worthless CDO’s because the banks were too greedy and too stupid to maintain a balanced portfolio of low risk/ low interest CDO’s.
So instead of behaving like rational prudent human beings, the management or guardians of our financial system were driven by greed and stupidity. Instead of treating one of the greatest inventions of our time, derivatives, responsibly and with care to expand credit and the economy, they instead turned them into a lethal weapon that changed a simple financial problem into a global nightmare.


What are Collateralized Debt Obligations, CDO’s ?

The instruments or Derivatives that were used to bundle mortgages issued by banks to homeowners are called Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDO’s).
These CDO’s were resold to other financial institutions to finance additional lending or issue more mortgages.
Each CDO was divided into roughly three slices or coupons. Coupon#1 was the safest guaranteed/low risk and thus carried a relatively low interest rate e.g. 5%, Coupon #2 was not entirely covered, held more risk but carried a higher interest rate e.g. 7% and the Coupon #3 was high risk and thus carried the highest 11% to 13% interest rate.
In case of any default or shortfall, holders of Coupon #1were the first to get paid and any surplus went first to coupon #2 and last to Coupon #3. Therefore, if any trouble or shortfall occurred the first coupon holders to get wiped out were those holding Coupon #3.
One of two things happened Coupons #1 and #2 were easily sold to prudent investors and the banks got stuck with coupon #3 or the banks were so greedy that they held on to coupon #3 because it had the greatest payout even though it carried the highest risk.

Integrity, Trust, Duty, Honor, not just words!

During Mr. Greenspan’s testimony before congress a couple of weeks ago he acknowledged that he had made one mistake.



He had assumed that the corporate “Elite” in charge of governance of our corporations, would behave with integrity and fulfill their duties with the honor deserving of the trust the rest of us, including himself, had invested in those who held the highest of corporate offices.

We can discuss the problem of using the word “assume” for ever but as we all know many people interpret it to mean “assume makes an ass of u and me” which is of course exactly what has happened.

However, the discussion here is whether Mr. Greenspan had good reasons to make the assumption about integrity when he did or not.

Around the 1980’s, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and its requirements for compliance forced corporations to clean up their “act” in terms of ethics and code of conduct.

Since then a new wave of other management techniques, mainly to cope with a myriad of social legislation (e.g. equal opportunity, diversity, sexual harassment, etc.) gave birth to the Vision, Mission, and Code of Conduct statements which turned up on a mostly voluntary basis in the more forward looking organizations.

It took until the post Enron/Worldcom era Sarbanes Oxly (SOX) legislation to make having these Vision, Mission and Ethics/Code of Conduct statements almost compulsory as evidence of the “tone at the top”

The problem with all these expressions of desired behavior was that they were just that, expressions of desired behavior. Agreed many companies trained their employees with lengthy and numerous training sessions, and management was encouraged to give these statements endless lip service, but with some minor exceptions nothing really changed especially not in the top echelon of the corporation. Top management rarely walked the talk.

Evidence the continued raping of the corporations and by default the shareholders with outrageous executive compensation, the blatant cheating by secretly backdating options, the petty thefts committed by executives on expense reports which ensured that hardly any private expense of the executive remained unpaid by claiming it as an entitlement or fringe benefit.

The reason why most people in high offices behave this way is because being in a high and powerful office is a new experience to them. Even though there are guidelines of how to behave with integrity and honor, it is not part of their DNA. There is no “noblesse oblige” mentality in their make up. They have worked hard to get to a position that they had no reasonable expectation to get to so they are “worth it”, they deserve everything they can get. It is difficult to deal with power responsibly if you have never been close to it or have never personally experienced it before.

Many fresh new executives have had no role model, no father who was in a high level position of power, whom they could have learned from at an early age, who they saw agonizing over difficult decisions he had to make which had major implications for a community, what it was like to be responsible for a large number of people, other than his immediate family’s, lively hood, how they had to be an example in their community and had to continue to earn their trust and confidence and so on.

Being taught by ones parents how to behave and conduct oneself in a position of power vis a vis ones servants thus learning how to treat them with respect, dignity and care is another example of learning at an early age that power demands duty and a sense of responsibility.

These are all things that shape an individual leader’s DNA. Admittedly it sounds like the preaching’s of an old era that is outdated and cannot work in a meritocracy. Therefore to assume that “noblesse oblige” is the M. O. in every high level executive is an unreasonable expectation. To expect that the ethics and self governance in the highest offices of the land are a substitute for sensible regulation and legislation is naïve and old fashioned to say the least. In this modern world omissions of a sense of duty and responsibility in some individuals can have global implications on the lives of millions of people.

Business is not just Business, it goes beyond the egotistical compensation and self help interests of the executives. Business is a serious undertaking; it carries with it responsibilities and duties to a broader community, it affects other peoples livelihoods and not only just those that work for the business, it affects whole communities, and as we have recently discovered, it affects the entire world.

It is time top management took the words seriously.

Mean but Green 1

We are all suffering from the current downturn in the Economy and most people are trying to tighten their belts by economizing on the two things they should not economize on and those are health and food. Many of us boomers are also approaching our retirement where we have got to get used to live of fixed incomes and try and cut costs.

The following is a sampling of all my suggestions I wrote about in my various blogs where we can economize without resorting to scrimping on health or food.

Telecommunications:

- Telephone; Landlines
Do you have a traditional landline costing you $60 per month at least, including Long Distance?
Did you know you can get a landline for $25 per month with Voice over IP (VOIP)? If you have a DSL or Cable internet connection you can get VOIP. T-Mobile can even offer this service for your mobile phone from home for only $10 per month if you do not need international. That is a savings of between $35 and $50 per month!

- Telephone; Mobile Phones
Are you on a post pay plan that costs you at least $60 per month with tons of free minutes that you never use and where you are constantly cut off? Did you know that you can get pre pay or pay as you go plans for as little as $10 per month? If you use your mobile phone for texting or SMS only, this money can last you for longer than a month and your message always arrives! You can also fill it up with higher amounts if you need to but my average spend is less than $25 per month. So here is another saving of between $35 and $50 per month; the messages can be as long as you want to make them!

- High Speed Internet connection
Have you refreshed your Internet service contract lately? Are you paying nearly $ 65 per month for DSL or Cable service? Check out all the offers and threaten your service provider with changing to another provider, and watch how quickly your charges will be reduced to $25. Another savings of $40 per month.

- Cable TV
Do you really need 100 to 200 channels? Do you really benefit from your $90 per month? How often do you use your DVR? Do you not have a VCR or a DVD recorder which can perform almost the same functions? Also, is it not true that most of the programs (sport, series, funnies) us boomers watch are on the national channels for free?
Buy some rabbit ears for $20 from Radio Shack, put them on your roof , tune them correctly and attach them to your cable wiring. You now have all the TV you need in picture perfect HD for free! Saving your self another $90 per month.

So by simply going through your everyday communications needs and paring them down to what you need, without sacrificing anything, we have just saved ourselves the grand total of between $200 and $230 per month.

Just imagine what that can buy you in quality food and health care in a month. And you aint seen nothing yet!

The next episode I will discuss, savings on ELECTRICITY, use of your CAR and CAR PAYMENTS, your HOUSE and MORTGAGE PAYMENTS and so on

Utilities to install Solar Panells on Residences

Why not?

As Anthony Ingram wrote in a letter to the editor of The Dallas Morning Post on July 30th.

"The Resident benefits from lower or zero Electric bills. The Electricity Company benefits from having small inexpensive power generating sites with minor maintenance. The community benefits by additional generation without major power plants. Everybody wins, except wind generation producers."

This clearly is an alternative way to add clean capacity to our power generating capability without adding new power stations. Imagine thousands of green mini-power stations that feed power to the grid and make your energy needs virtually free of charge.

This method of generating power, helps our country, saves the environment and helps the consumer with reduced or zero energy prices. No need for expensive wind farms, no need for new or enhanced grids to transport the energy from the farms to the existing grid costing billions of dollars. Believe me the grid between our homes and the utility company exists TODAY. The Technology exists and works TODAY!

As it is too expensive for most ordinary households to install, even with a 50% subsidy and a $7,000 tax credit, why not have the utility company install the panels and pay for it? They are going to spend money on new and additional green energy generation capacity anyway!

As a payback on their investment the utility company will not have to pay the resident for any electricity the panels on their homes return back to the grid, (believe it or not the meters on your residence will start spinning backwards and put electricity back into the grid when your home generates more electricity than it requires) until the cost of the panels and the installation is paid off.

If all this sounds implausible, it is not. “A proposal for $6.4bn of new power lines linking new wind farms with Texas’ public electricity grid, whose cost will be borne mainly by consumers”. Not my words, see article in my links.

See how many houses could be equipped with solar panels with this money. The gross cost for an average but complete solar panel installation is roughly $35,000. So for $6.4 billion roughly 200,000 houses could be provided with solar panels that will feed the grid.

I have not even discussed the amount of money a Texas utility is about to spend to increase its capacity with green power sources! How many more homes could be equipped with these huge amounts of money.

I invite you all in joining me to call for a energy solution that is a win win for all. And vote for power to the people.

CRUISING LIVE A BOARD

When you surf the Internet for retirement options, the possibility of retiring on a cruise ship seems to be popping up more and more often the closer we get to the time that boomers are going to retire.

The benefits of retiring on a cruise ship are eloquently described everywhere and generally well known. It is also clear that retirement for the rich retirees is generally well catered for through expensive world cruises and floating apartment complexes. As ever if one has the money most things are possible.

The subject of this article is about how to make retiring on a cruise ship of a regular cruise line affordable, flexible and convenient for the person of average means.

The focus here is on retiring on a commercial cruise line because dedicated floating retirement homes will most probably be too expensive. Not only that, but it will take the charm of meeting different people of various ages on a day to day basis and the constant change in entertainment and itineraries out of the success formula, both of which are clearly part of the secrets to staying young and energetic.

That given, let me list some of the things that could make retiring on a cruise ship a costly, inflexible and at times an inconvenient experience for those of us who are not wealthy.

Start with the cost; Most of us will retire with probably $2,000 to $5,000 per month in retirement money. We will focus at the lower end of the bracket $2,000 and see if we can make this work.

Some of the cruise lines will offer an interior/inside stateroom/cabin for roughly $60 per day per person if you book last minute. Also if you book last minute one could potentially get this for one single person. If you are a repeat customer they might even upgrade you or give you a further discount. This translates to $1,860 per month. So on a $2,000 per month budget you would only have $140 per month left. Not very much, but doable. In addition If you only have $2000 per month you can only afford itineraries that are 30 days or less, doable but tricky.

The important thing here is you need to find a way to constantly book last minute in order to keep you rate affordable and find itineraries of 30 days or less to remain within your budget.

There are other things to consider.

First; you have to get to the ship, which can be cheap if you live in Miami, FT Lauderdale, Tampa, Port Everglades, Vancouver, Los Angeles, San Francisco or any of the other ports that cruise lines use as their embarkation points. Most of us though do not live by these ports and will have to fly. So that needs to be added to at least the initial cost.

Second; you need to be able to remain on the same ship as long as possible to make it convenient and avoid further transportation costs to another port to continue your journey. The way the airfares are moving this is inconvenient and not a very cheap proposition that would put this lifestyle out of your reach with a limited budget. An alternative is that you switch to another ship at the same port on the same day, sometimes unavoidable but still inconvenient.

The takeaway here is that you need to pick your itineraries and cruise lines with precision and good timing in order to avoid the inconvenience of moving ship and/or incurring unwanted transportation costs.

Now would it not be nice if there was some sort of body with members, a Union, which took care of all these details for you. A Union that you could join free of charge and that had such a strength in numbers it could get affordable pricing, convenient itineraries and flexibility to help your dream come true?

I am attempting to put together precisely such a group that will negotiate such pricing for you, have strength in numbers to make it flexible reliable for you to live aboard cruise liners without worrying about the details and so on.

The Union of members will negotiate:
• Affordable pricing,
• Flexible payment terms, so that you could go on longer itineraries without having to pay for the entire itinerary up front,
• Coordinated and contiguous itineraries, that will maximize your live aboard on the same ship and make swaps as convenient as possible and keep transportation cost to a minimum,
• Provide on shore facilities at major departure ports
• Provide umbrella health insurance for members

Please come and join us at http://cruisingthruretirement.blogspot.com free of charge so that we can build one of the most powerful unions of retirees’ and soon to be retirees’ in order to make retiring on a cruise ship a reality for all.

RETIRING ON A CRUISE SHIP

Can you see the regularity by which some of the major departure ports turn up again and again for different itineraries?

Vancouver, FT Lauderdale, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Rome, London, Sidney and so on.


This is important as these ports are the key to our convenience strategy to be able to LiveAboard cruise-liners long term and keep transfers between ships to a minimum, perferably none.
On my website Xpdatravel I have put together cruise iteneraries from two months to one year where the LiveAboard does not have to leave their ship at all.

To achieve this the LiveAboard sometimes has to put up with some repetitive itineraries. Although seeing Athens or Rome four times/days over a two month period is not a high price to pay for the convenience of the LiveAboard to be able stay on the ship and not to have to incur travel expenses to go to another port or change ship.


Come and join us so we can work dillegently to make the LiveAboard dream come true and vist us at CRUISINGTHRURETIREMENT to and make us stronger or send me an e-mail Bou@xpdatravel.com expressing your interest.

GREEN WEAPON IN THE ENERGY WARS

Many, many people in Rockwall, Texas have golf carts. They ride around in them in their gated communities . Why not drive around in them in their small towns? Would that not be the perfect solution to some of our energy and environmental needs? Besides the bicicle and just plain walking golf carts are probably the most environmentally friendly and energy efficient way of going about ones local business.

Before long, the canvas-covered, open-sided carts may be less of a surprise on the streets, such as those of Pine Lawn, Missouri, a working-class suburb of St Louis.

Under pressure from rising fuel prices, towns across the United States are passing bylaws to permit the use of golf carts on their streets as an alternative to cars for ordinary citizens.
"You can definitely save on gas - my cart's electric, but even the ones that run on gas hardly use any of it," said Paul Heideman, mayor of Ashkum, a town in rural Illinois.

Numerous other towns in Illinois, Indiana and North Carolina have implemented similar regulations or are considering them. And in several places where the carts are an increasingly common sight, another benefit is becoming clear: with no windows or doors to separate drivers from each other, or from pedestrians, the texture of daily life is changing. "It leads to a friendlier atmosphere," Heideman said.

Why does'nt a small town like Rocwall in Texas make golf-carts lawful street vehicles? Paul the owner of East Texas Colf Cars who runs a golf-cart business should be lobbying hard to get this done.

Golf carts have a serious image problem, however: many people associate them with old age and pensioners . But with the help of East Texas Golf Cars in Rockwall carts can be kitted out with chrome wheels, leather seats and high-end gadgetry - an effect slightly marred by the legal requirement to display a sign declaring that the cart is a slow-moving vehicle.

The potential for savings on fuel is huge and the carts are an ideal solution for those worst hit by the current economic downturn: a basic vehicle costs around $2,000. You have to be careful though as the risk of injury is higher than in a regular car.

Despite its limitations, though, Jones said they had transformed the job of policing Pine Lawn. "Now people can talk to them [officers] more easily," he said.

When will Rockwall in Texas follow?

Incoherent and Spooky!!

Scientology, Strange goings on.

Is This Guy Crazy?

Are you paying for watching TV?

I know this sounds funny, but do your self a favor and check what channels you all really watch at home.



Ignore what channels you need at work or what your kids want to look at. What channels do you or your wife really view at home?



Do you watch the popular programs? Like Sixty Minutes, Desperate Housewives, NFL Football, Basketball, Baseball, Playoffs, Boston Legal, PBS, Lost, Grey’s Anatomy, CSI, Law and Order, Dirty Sexy Money, 20/20, House, The Late night Shows, Leno and Letterman and so on and so forth.



All of these are aired on network TV and are free and in HDTV, if you want them to be.



All you have to do is get yourself a rabbit ears type antenna from any Tech Store and connect it to your cable wiring, so it distributes the signal to your entire home.



How do I know this?



We are Baby Boomers and recently moved from an Apartment to a Townhouse down the road at Chandlers Landing. We had AT&T Uverse in our apartment, but when we moved we were told that Uverse was not available at the Townhouse.



We had a small TV in the kitchen of the General Electric variety with rabbit ears the reception of which was perfect in both our Apartment and in the Town House down the road for about 20 channels.



So in some casual banter my significant other observed that it was a shame that we could not get as perfect a reception on our other TV’s (without having cable or satellite) as the one we were getting from our kitchen TV for FREE!



I thought this was a great idea and I started to investigate to see if I could satisfy my significant other’s ambition. I knew that if I could find some sort of contraption that could receive a TV transmission signal that I could attach to our cable distribution cables, I could get it done, and went to shop for one.



We had a dish on our roof so I immediately thought that if I could find a dish like contraption/receiver that could perform a similar function and would receive a TV signal from a tower instead of a satellite or a cable and connect it to our Dish TV wiring I could distribute it to the home.



The dish was only a partial success and I returned it to the store and exchanged it for an indoor aerial with rabbit ears. I anchored that aerial on the roof and connected it to the wiring to transmit it to the entire house.



In order to protect it from the elements I wrapped it in a plastic freezer bag, pierced the bag to allow the rabbit ears to be deployed and mounted it on the roof.



We have watched TV for free ever since with a picture (HDTV) perfect screen including those transmissions that were supposed to be on cable but were transmitted on local channels due to their importance to the local community.



Why don’t you join us and watch TV that is paid for by the commercials and return to the good old days when TV was free.

MEDICAL CARE ACCESSIBLE TO EVERYONE!

Look at what the Dutch are doing! DYI Blood work! Already widely accepted in Japan, now adapted in Holland.

No doctors, no nurses, no appointments, no travel, no doctor fees. You can do it anywhere, anytime by mail and results sent to you within 48 hrs to your e-mail!

Apply on the net for a kit to be sent to your home, do the blood gathering whenever you want, send your sample to the lab and get your results and recommendations deliverd to your in box!

Now that is what I call universal health care!

How do you achieve credibility for your internet business?

So you have paid your money to whomever it is that has told you that you can get rich sleeping if you market and sell their product or services. You have gotten yourself a website and an URL with an interesting sounding name that differentiates you from the tens of thousands that are also selling the product and services, you were provided with, had someone make you an impressive website or built it yourself with all kinds of interesting information about the products you are selling and an e-commerce page that allows people to buy your products on line!

Now what.

Nobody is visiting your website let alone buying your products. So you start working on promoting your website in an effort to generate traffic. You start placing free classified ads or even paid ads in various internet publications such as Bacpage.com, Craig’s lists, Add-post, Lycos .com, Local.com, Domesticsales.com, Google base and so forth and so on.

You go to your website stats every day and still there is barely a noticeable trickle of visitors to your site.

You have already printed business cards, postcards and brochures at considerable cost courtesy of Vistaprint.com and have distributed them in the small town that you live in and have gone around your neighborhood, the golf club, the beauty parlors and put postcards promoting your internet business in every mailbox that you could find. You have spent a ton of money on print cartridges and glossy paper for your brochures.

You keep checking your visitors stats and be damned if you could find any increase in traffic of visitors to your website not to mention anyone buying anything from you.

What to do next?

You scour the internet for advice, watch hundreds of video’s that are all bait and switch schemes that promise the world and deliver very little, you try some of those get rich quick marketing schemes that do not work, throw more money away, send e-mails with promotional materials, including video’s, to whomever you can find in your outlook address book.

Make a ton of videos that you then upload to YouTube, Google, Yahoo, Mydeo, My Space, WAYN, Face Book, because the entire community of Guru’s tell you that it will increase your rankings on the search engines. This is only partially true with regard to your rankings in the video search pages but does not really help you with your rankings on the regular search pages.

And still barely anything happens to your daily visitors statistics.
So there must be something else that is required.

And of you go setting up your own blogs on subjects related to your business, commenting on other peoples blogs that are relevant to the business. Writing articles on EzineArticles.com and more commenting on other articles relevant to you business.
You join Adsense, put a Google search bar and Adsense ads on your website go to Commission Junction and get RSS feeds to earn commissions on their ads; all this in the hope that the cross polinization will drive traffic to your site. You get an XML site map for your sites, upload them to your site, register them with Google and Yahoo and get verified.

Surely you have done a fair amount with all of the above to get your sites noticed. I have had various refereed articles published in my name, that people are using to promote their websites such as Amazon.com, Strategic Finance, All Business and so on, I am not sure if they are successful, but these entries have been there for four years, so that must mean something. All you have to do is Google or Yahoo search “bou van kuyk” (my name) and at least Five to ten entries show up promoting the big name companies mentioned above, including my own three websites, but then who will ever look for a name like that unless they already know me?

Yet traffic to my websites remains anemic and I wonder what it is that I have to do next! Or what it is that prevents people from taking me serious.

I am good looking, have an honest face, am responsible, get my customers great value products, got a privacy statement on my website, have a published Toll free number, various IM buttons by which they can contact me thru Yahoo or MSN with a simple click, am approved/certified by Pay pal, have opened business accounts for each of my businesses so as to not commingle funds, so what is stopping people from making purchases on my website?

Although this sounds like an excuse, and I certainly have not thrown in the towel yet, but some of the reasons may be readily available.

First, I believe that the internet is riddled with no name scammers, MLM’ers and people that imitate big name companies to extract money from honest unsuspecting people, selling them stuff that does not really exist, who have been burned so many times that they have become gun-shy and are reluctant to part with their money to anyone that cannot positively verify that they are part of a well known chain.

The worst of these products and services are subscription based and typically start with a free trial period. The subscription kicks in automatically after the trail period and is invariably under $30 ($29.99) per month and non refundable. The trick here then is to make the cancellation method as cumbersome as possible, hoping that the customer forgets or gives up on trying to cancel it before the trial is over. At least one monthly subscription kicks in for an amount that is low enough for the customer not to sue to get it refunded and to let it go or write it off as a lesson learned.
Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me! This person will think twice before he or she enters into a transaction on the internet again and there are millions of them.

Secondly, the fact that any person who joins an MLM and is not one of the first to join, like number 98,996, will find it extremely difficult to make money without spending an inordinate a mount of time and money to get traction. So it is important to pick a business that does not depend on MLM to make money, unless you are one of the firsts to join.

Although I have been unsuccessful to date, I firmly believe that the YTB proposition of offering people and corporations their own website to book travel and receive commissions is a good one.

It is unfortunate that the MLM part is so widely publicized as the real money maker, which I believe it is not, except for the very few who came in at the top. It is merely a strategy to increase travel bookings under the YTB banner by the masses and so increase market share for YTB in sales of travel.

Most individuals that spend less than $6000 per year in travel should not own their own website, although of course any amount of travel that they book on their own website, no matter how small, counts toward sales of travel by YTB thus growing the company and increasing its market share.

The minimal amount of travel booked by these small owners, compared to the amount they spend for maintaining a YTB website has also skewed YTB’s earnings. YTB earns more from selling and hosting portals/websites than from selling Travel.

However the notion of taking out the middleman and offering the traveler the opportunity to be the travel agent instead is pure genius.

The traveler/corporation now has the opportunity to benefit from the commissions that the traditional middle man receives and lower their travel expenses with those commissions.

Additionally by becoming the middleman/travel agent, YTB offers its site owners the opportunity to be in charge of their travel arrangements. The site owner/traveler has full and direct access to the travel operators and as such has access to benefits that are not available to the ordinary traveler.

So I am convinced that I picked the right business model, but would like to only sell travel the “honorable way” by targeting people/corporations who can truly benefit/make a profit from having a turnkey secure hosted travel website and therefore by definition will buy at least $6000 per year in travel. I do this by openly publishing the one time set up costs of $450 and the monthly maintenance/hosting/ Liability insurance fee of $50 up front, which by the way may be the other reason why nobody comes to my site, perhaps I should hide the real costs just like everyone else!
That is the way to a win/win proposition, I make money from their travel, they save money on their travel and YTB increases market share in the travel business instead of the Website hosting business.

So I have not really been able to provide the answer to my original question. And I would be greatly appreciative for any helpful hints from fellow strugglers.

Having said all that, I invite anyone to comment on my observation of how to get noticed on the internet and to be taken seriously and my observations about YTB, MLM and Scammers.