Well i hope someone will do something about slowing this crisis down. I heard/read yesterday that 30% of Prime rated borrowers are being turned down for car loans, vs 10% last year. The number for Sub Prime rated borrowers was a 90% rejection rate, vs just 30% last year, basically the sub prime market is gone. With all the automakers reporting sales down 35% and show room traffic down 45%, we can see these new financial realities hitting the society in many different ways and few if any are ‘good’.

I say let’s call these toxic securities(and i use the term securities loosely) as worth 35 cents on the dollar, for the purpose of “Mark to Market” accounting rule for a 6 to 12 month periods. This will bring borrowers into compliance with loan covenants thus slowing the crisis. In fact had this been the case last january, most of the crisis might not have happened.

Hat’s off to NBC’s Andrea Joyce for the digusting interview of the US Olympic Women’s Gymnastics Team and in particular the 1 on 1 interview with Alicia Sacramone.

How appropriate to continually asked her how it felt about….

1 what went thru your head when you made this mistake?

2. how did you feel when you realized your mistake cost your teamates a gold medal?

3. it seems like your mistake rattled your teamates, what did you say to them after you came back from the balance beam, where you fell?

4. How did you prepare for the floor excercises, that you made 2 errors on?

5. What was your the feeling about being the captain of the team and …..

these are not exact quotes, but they might as well be.

I spent the last few days chatting with a business associate about psychology and human development. My first bachelor’s degree is in Pyschology. Those discussions and some recent stories i’ve read about treating earthquake victims in china and helping people in trauma (physical, emotional/mental). Current thinking seems to be: the most effective way to overcome come the emotional trauma is ask what they need (within reason) not to ask them to replay the event and discuss its implications. Replaying the bad times often results in a reinfliction of pain.

While Andrea Joyce’s job isn’t to be trauma counselor, she could have let Scaramone just talk about her feelings and experiences. Instead Joyce work hard to seem like mike wallace interviewing some tin horn dictator.

Gold Medal for the Most offensive interview: NBC and Andrea Joyce. Contrast that with the way Meridith Viero asked the same questions on the Today show this next morning.

I’m happy to read that their is finally some action in Washington and the various state legislature across the US to deal with this outbreak of businesses operating as Non-Profits claiming that the purchase of their products are “donations”. Nothing could be farther from the truth. This fake charity issue is something i face each day as the CEO of an Offset company. There are a number of my competitors who sell the same services as I do, complete with branding, but their business is organized as a non-profit claiming to be a charity. It’s not true in many cases, rather the Non-Profit is a vehicle to enrich the staff of the non-profit, by offering their clients a tax deduction for the purchase of a product is not in anyway charitable.

Fortunately i’m not just a lone voice in the woods, various governments are starting to look into these businesses to put a halt to what are essentally a tax scam against the government and a confidence scam agains Offset clients. How many people bought an offset from a non-profit that was from the Chicago Climate exchange? Most offer that, so do we www.4offsets.com, nothing wrong with that, except that offset, in most cases, was bought from a commericial business. How is this in anyway a charitable contribution? Say the XYZgreen.org sells 1 ton of offsets for $10, that they bought for $6. What happens to the $4? In some cases i’ve looked into, it goes to pay the staff and not 1 dime is used for charitable works In a charity, it is used for charitable works, giving things to community whether money or knowledge.

Join me in the fight agains this abuse of the non-profit system and is a being used to scam million of Americans into believing someone’s source of wealth is really a charity. Don’t get scammed!
Ask for details of the non-profit’s charitable works and ask for IRS filings
Is the board of directors controlled by people who work at the foundation?
Where is the outside oversite?