Failure.

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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They say that success breeds success and to a great extent that is true. If, for example, you have a successful business it can give you the confidence and the cash to acquire or set up another.

But is the opposite also true? Does failure breed failure?

I think it does. Most people tend to get the confidence knocked out of them when they fail. That’s why most never really succeed after one or two set backs. Some are so afraid of failure that they won’t even try the first time.

But, when they fail, some do get up, dust themselves down, and try again. And they are the ones who prove that failing a few times can, in the long run, actually lead to greater success that would otherwise have been the case.

Most of the world’s greatest serial entrepreneurs have had their failures. Some have even been bankrupt or been close to it. It may have dented their confidence a little and made them more cautious for the next time, but it didn’t stop them trying and that’s the key to real success.

Sure, plan well, be smart, work hard and all those good things, but don’t give up.

Does that mean you are bound to succeed? Well, no it doesn’t. There can always be extenuating circumstances well out of your control that makes things go wrong, but on average you should come out ahead. And you will have the satisfaction of knowing that you did your best and that’s as much as any of us can hope for.

It also helps if you set you sights at a realistic level. Barring a highly unlikely win on the lotto you won’t become a millionaire overnight, no matter how many of those self-help books you buy or how many internet webinars you attend. Nor will you become a Hollywood superstar if you move to L.A. and fill in the time waiting tables in the hope that some famous producer will stop by and ‘discover’ you.

Winston Churchill perhaps summarized it best when he said that success was going from one failure to the next without any loss of enthusiasm. Be sensible and it may be success that waits round the corner for you.

 

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“No Credit. Bad Credit. All Credit. 100 Percent Approval.”

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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We had it with the real estate market. Billions of dollars being lent to people who obviously couldn’t afford it.

We saw the trouble, hardship, misery and financial woes that were caused as credit dried up, real estate prices began to tumble, and bankruptcies and foreclosures increased.

And we know the damage it did to the economy when irresponsible banks and other lenders went bust and almost brought down the entire financial system. 

Smart people would learn from such a situation.

Smart people would never contemplate doing such a thing again.

But despite what they would like to have you believe, bankers are not smart people. They’re dumb and they are greedy, a deadly combination.

As a result of the financial crisis millions of Americans (and people in other countries too) have been left with poor credit scores. Yet remarkably they are now able to easily obtain auto loans from used-car dealers, including some who fabricate or ignore borrowers’ abilities to repay. Even if you are bankrupt or living only on social security, banks like Wells Fargo will lend you thousands of dollars to buy a used car.

It’s called the new sub-prime boom, because the lack of caution resembles the frenzied sub-prime mortgage market before its collapse. And it is already bringing misery to many people who have been suckered into taking out loans that they clearly could not afford.

Worse than that, these sub-prime auto loans often come with terms that take advantage of the most desperate, least financially sophisticated customers, with interest rates that can exceed 20 percent. And many of the loans can be at least twice the value of the second hand cars they are being used to purchase!

This creates a vicious circle for some borrowers, who still owe money on a car that they are trading in when they purchase another one, meaning that the former debt is rolled over into the new loan and they end up, not just paying too much for their current car, but also continue to pay off the loan on their previous car that they don’t even have!

This is the way loan sharks operate. Eventually you end up borrowing your own money and paying them interest for the privilege!

This surge in sub-prime auto lending is being driven by some of the same dynamics that were at work in sub-prime mortgages. There is a veritable deluge of money pouring into sub-prime autos, as the high rates and steady profits of the loans attract investors.

And just as Wall Street stoked the boom in mortgages, some of the nation’s biggest banks and private equity firms are now feeding the growth in sub-prime auto loans by investing in lenders and making money available for loans.

To quote some of the figures, auto loans to people with bad credit have risen more than 130 percent in the five years since the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis, with roughly one in four new auto loans last year going to borrowers considered sub-prime, that is, people with credit scores at or below 640. Wells Fargo, mentioned earlier, made $7.8 billion in auto loans in the second quarter of this year, up 9 percent from a year earlier, and has at least $50 billion in auto loans on its books.

Even worse, as was the case with sub-prime mortgages before the financial crisis, many sub-prime auto loans are being bundled up into complex bonds and sold as securities by banks to insurance companies, mutual funds and public pension funds. They are all scrambling for these, which in turn creates ever-greater demand for loans, and leads to the banks issuing more and more sub-prime credit.

Unbelievably it’s the same crooks doing exactly the same thing, including using incorrect information about borrowers’ income and employment, so that people who had lost their jobs, or were bankrupt, or living on Social Security, could qualify for loans that they could never afford.

Admittedly, the size of the sub-prime auto loan market is only a tiny fraction of the sub-prime mortgage market at its peak, and its implosion would not have the same far-reaching consequences.

For the banks the investors silly enough to buy their bonds, that is.

But the misery is just as great for the people who are suckered into accepting credit they cannot afford.

Illegal it may not be, but immoral it certainly is.

Political leaders who sit astride high horses and purport to be working on behalf of the ordinary people should be doing something about it.

But, as I’ve said before, don’t hold your breath!

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Iowa? IOWA? Oh, no, NOT IOWA!

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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The Sunday Sermon

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I read a strange thing on the internet the other day.

Not much unusual there, you could do that every day.

This was a study that found that Americans’ attitudes about whether the US should intervene in Ukraine is correlated with their ability to find the country on the map.

And even more strangely  –  perhaps  –  it was the Americans who COULDN’T find the Ukraine on a map who were more in favor of intervention!

Apparently  –  and I kid you not  –  some of the respondents thought that the Ukraine was in Iowa.

Europe with Ukraine highlighted USA with Iowa highlighted

Unfortunately the guys that think out American foreign policy are these sorts of people. The kind who just don’t know what they are talking about. The kind of bureaucrats who rub Preparation H on their elbows  –  if you see what I mean!

Recent history proves this beyond all reasonable doubt.

To add insult to injury so to speak, these know nothings who advise the President on foreign matters try to spin every situation by telling everyone that, even though it has massive debt already and is effectively bankrupt, the US must still be the world’s policeman and uphold democracy.

Why?

What business is it of ours?

And if we are so hell bent on ensuring democracy exists throughout the world why aren’t we intervening in one of the biggest dictatorships of them all, Saudi Arabia which was also the home of most of the 9/11 terrorists and of course Bin Laden’s mother country? But no, lets attack Iraq and Afghanistan instead!

For more than half a century American foreign policy has been dictated by a mindless mantra that “if the Russians are for it, then we’re against it”.

The rights and wrongs of any particular situation are not analyzed or discussed. The facts are never examined. The truth is not even looked for.

That is why US foreign policy has been such a shambles throughout the world and will continue to be so until basically the people directing it wise up.

As for the Ukraine?

First of all it is NOT in Iowa.

Second, the US has spent (wasted) $5 billion and more during the past twenty years on “democratization” programs in Ukraine, including efforts from the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, the International Republican Institute and the National Endowment for Democracy.

Third, yes there were elements within the Ukraine who did not like being subservient to Russia, but what happened in the Ukraine was that a democratically elected president, Yanukovych, was overthrown in February in what amounted to a coup d’etat.

Students of history will remember what a funk America was in when the Russians started to “assist” Cuba way back in the early 1960s, yet they can’t understand why Russian leader Putin doesn’t want a fully nuclear armed Ukraine as anything other than an ally on his doorstep.

Why can they not see that the strategy of absorbing Ukraine into NATO and stationing missile defense systems there, is bound to piss the Russians off in exactly the same way as events in Cuba did for the Americans?

The fact is, of course, that they probably do see that. And they don’t care. The name of the game here is not upholding democracy at all. Such a laudable goal is only a smokescreen. The name of the game is to try to curtail Russia by having Ukrainian missiles pointed towards Moscow instead of Washington, or Washington’s allies.

It’s a game plan that Putin sees quite clearly. To think that he will sit back and not respond is just a fantasy. Let’s hope that the idiots in Washington don’t land us with yet another catastrophe.

With their past record I wouldn’t count on it though!

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No Mo Town?

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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Here comes the Sunday Sermon folks!

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Before his first election victory the platform was one of “change” and “yes we can”, not very specific policies but the implication was that everything would get better under his administration, and people went for it.

Guess what?

“No he couldn’t” and “nothing changed”, not for the better anyhow.

Then last year during the re-election campaign he said, “We refuse to let Detroit go bankrupt”, and people went for it again.

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Guess what?

Detroit is bankrupt! Yes, last Thursday, Detroit became the largest U.S. city to declare bankruptcy, filing for Chapter 9 protection.

Are you seeing a trend here?

You should.

But it’s not all Obama’s fault. By no means. He’s just the latest in a long line of clueless politicians who made big promises and had no idea how to pay for them.

So how did it get this bad?

How did the city of Detroit that was once the powerhouse of America, and from whose industry came wealth creation that stimulated the entire economy, get to the stage of being bankrupt?

Sadly, what has happened to Detroit is the culmination of decades of political incompetence and graft and corruption.

For example, the most recent mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, is currently facing charges of racketeering conspiracy, extortion, bribery, mail and wire fraud, filing false tax returns and income tax evasion, Quite a guy!

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It is also the culmination of years of union’s self-serving greed that meant, for example, that every car Detroit manufactured had to be sold at a loss – if it were to sell any at all.

But the problem goes even deeper than that.

Detroit is just the latest example of political and economic stupidity that has been allowed to fester within many western nations. It is not just an American malaise. The very same thing has happened in other countries, like Britain.

And it has happened because American and British politicians got the idea that their countries were a bit better than everyone else’s.

That they could leave the blue collar stuff like steel-making, ship building, car assembly and everything else that created true wealth for a nation, to be done by other ‘inferior’ places such as Japan, Korea, Taiwan and more lately China.

They actively helped to destroy their own manufacturing base through lack of investment, over taxation, needless government interference and over-regulation, etc.

Worse than this, they thought they could replace real industries making real money, with ‘service’ industries.

They never figured out that the former is the foundation that means you can afford the luxury of the latter!

And guess what? They still haven’t!

So instead of making real money, greedy banksters were allowed to conjure imaginary money out of nowhere. Then they were allowed (and encouraged) to invest money that didn’t exist in products that weren’t real either! And of course they lost the money. 

And the governments were willing accomplices to this fraud. When they could’t balance their books they simply printed more money and used this imaginary wealth in their economic statistics reports to show everyone how well they were doing.

Detroit is just the latest and biggest example of what the policy of living well beyond your means….. means!

So is this the end for this once great city?

Absolutely not. In fact it might be the making of it. There are going to be tough times ahead, but getting rid of a crippling $20 billion debt, which their bankruptcy will do, at the very least makes a recovery a possibility.

The halcyon days may be gone and never to return because of the damage the politicians have done. But there will be better days ahead.

When you reach the bottom you may bounce around there for a while but eventually the only way is back up.

If the politicians let you, that is.

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Further Fabulously Fascinating Facts From Fasab!

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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I don’t know what it is about the letter ‘F’ but it seems to lend itself better to alliteration than any of the others – if your blog is called Fasab, that is 🙂 

Anyhow, here we go with another selection of those fabulously fascinating facts.

Enjoy.

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To manufacture a new car approximately 148,000 liters of water is needed.

 

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In 1985, a pregnant women was falsely accused of shoplifting a basketball

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The study of twins is known as gemellology

 

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Dalmatian puppies do not have any spots on them when they are born.

They actually develop them as they get older

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At the equator the Earth spins at about 1,038 miles per hour

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In World War II, the German submarine U-1206 was sunk by a malfunctioning toilet

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As a defense mechanism, the North American Opossum closes its eyes and becomes totally limp.

Basically it plays dead, hence the term ‘playing possum’.

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Approximately 18 billion disposable diapers end up in landfills each year.

These diapers can takes as long as 500 years to finally decompose

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Only one out of every three people wash their hands when leaving a public bathroom

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The Eisenhower interstate system requires that one mile in every five must be straight.

These straight sections are usable as airstrips in times of war or other emergencies.

 

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Two objects have struck the earth with enough force to destroy a whole city.

Each object, one in 1908 and again in 1947, struck regions of Siberia.

Not one human being was hurt either time

Tunguska asteroid strike 1908

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When Scott Paper Co. first started manufacturing toilet paper

they did not put their name on the product because of embarrassment

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Ian Fleming named his character “James Bond” after real-life ornithologist and author

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A Canadian, Troy Hurtubise, spent $100,000 and almost went bankrupt

building a RoboCop style suit so that he could withstand a bear attack

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The big toe is the foot reflexology pressure point for the head

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In November 1999, two women were killed by a lightning bolt.

The underwire located in their bras acted as a electrical conductors,

and when the lightning bolt hit the bra they left burn marks on their chest

 

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Average life span of a major league baseball: 7 pitches.

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Every U.S. bill regardless of denomination costs just 4 cents to make

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The average day is actually 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4.09 seconds.

We have a leap year every four years to make up for this shortfall

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Approximately 10.5 gallons of water is used in a dishwasher.

Washing the dishes by hand can use up to 20 gallons of water

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The Richest Nation The World Has Ever Known Has Become The Greatest Debtor The World Has Ever Known

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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****A Saturday rant****

One day this week, according to all reliable financial sources, the United States of America’s debt burden reaches the $16 trillion mark, or as close to it as makes no difference.

That’s $16,000,000,000,000.00

The richest nation the world has ever known has now become the greatest debtor the world has ever known.

And the problem which began to get seriously out of control under the Bush Presidency is still spiraling out of control under Obama’s regime.

go bananas

To add a little perspective to the huge numbers, it took the United States government more than two hundred years to accumulate its first trillion dollars of debt, BUT it took only two hundred and eighty-six days for the most recent trillion dollars of debt to be added. And that was under the  “Yes We Can” and “Change” administration.

So what has changed?

Nothing much.

Yes we can what?

• Borrow and borrow and borrow again?
• Let the horrific bankster’s mess run on for a few more decades?
• Dream up more and more new government programs that we cannot afford?
• Leave future generations in so much debt that they will never and can never get out from under it, (because there won’t be enough money to pay the interest on the debt let alone repay it)?
• Continue to stick our heads in the sand while other nations kick our ass?

As I write this I can hear the Fed’s printing presses clunking away producing more new dollars out of thin air, which they will distribute through the banks  –  who will keep most of the money instead of releasing it to individuals and businesses to stimulate the economy and create employment.

Sadly, not only is the nation bankrupt, but the politicians who govern it are too  –  bankrupt of good ideas, intelligence and common sense. Their mentality is, ‘if something isn’t working, don’t change it, just do more of it’.  (Aaaarrrrrrggggghhhhhhh!!!)

Their ultimate solution will be, as it inevitably always is – more taxes and more control! Just wait for those shoes to drop.

In the US, Hawaii and Florida are the only states that grow bananas. I suggest that they start looking for ways to up production because that is the type of republic the politicians seem hell bent turning us into!

****End rant****

naked banana