Smart Money

First, let me thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to help me solve a very perplexing problem.

I’m the Defendant in this case and I’m completely confused.

When I was a kid going to school I was taught that the judicial system in the United States was designed to protect the life, liberty, and property of we the people. You and me.

I was taught that when someone injures you, you can use the courts to make yourself whole. Get back what you lost. What was taken from you. Our courts weren’t created to help attorneys and corporations make profits.

Plaintiff (Credigy Receivables Inc, or LVNV Funding, LLC, or whomever) is claiming that I owe them a large amount of money. Which is perplexing since I had never heard of them until I received a very threatening letter in the mail from them about a year ago.

I have checked all my records. I have no record of a contract with them. I have no record of ever doing any business with them. Yet, they say I owe them money?

They say they bought an account of mine from a bank. And because of this alleged purchase, I now owe them the alleged balance due on this account.

I have asked for a copy of any contract they might have with the bank that shows my name, account number, and the amount they paid for the account. They refuse to provide this evidence. They insist I take their word for it.

What I need you to do, is put yourself in my shoes. See this strange situation from my perspective. Then decide how you would like to be treated.

Imagine if you would.

One day, out of the blue, you get a letter from one of your neighbors from two doors down saying you owe them money. They claim they bought a debt from your next door neighbor. Your next door neighbor claims they paid your electric bill several months ago and you have refused to repay them for the favor. Now, your neighbor two doors down who bought this alleged debt and wants to collect.

Here’s the first problem.

When your next door neighbor originally asked you to repay them, being a fair minded person you asked for a little evidence.

You asked the next door neighbor for a copy of this alleged electric bill that he said he paid and a receipt showing he paid it, when he paid it, and how much he paid, and a sworn statement saying he used his own money to pay the bill. You didn’t want to pay your neighbor if it wasn’t his money that paid the bill, even if he had receipts.

He refused. The only thing he would give you was a statement/invoice that he created on his computer showing the amount he claims you owe.

Now, the neighbor two doors down is trying to collect on the same alleged debt.

You ask him for a copy of the contract showing he purchased the debt. A contract that shows your name, account number, amount allegedly owed, amount he paid for the account. Proof that he actually bought this account. He refuses.

You also ask him for the same evidence you asked your next door neighbor for. Proof of the original debt. Instead of doing the honest thing, providing proof, he files a law suit. Hoping you won’t be able or willing to pay an attorney to represent you or capable of defending yourself.

The only evidence that your neighbor two doors down has, is the statement created by your next door neighbor. But no supporting evidence. A statement that anyone, including your next door neighbor, could create if they owned a computer.

If this happened to you, what would you want me to do? Make you pay the bill? Make your neighbors provide some valid proof that you actually owe the money?

I have attempted to pay the bank, upon receipt of proof that they lent me money. They refused my payment. Evidence of this will be provided.

I have demanded evidence from plaintiff and its attorneys through discovery. They have refused. Evidence of this will be provided.

I have motioned the court to force plaintiff and its attorneys to provide evidence of a contract, evidence of the debt. The judge has denied all my motions. This is a matter of court record.

Today, I’m the defendant, tomorrow, it may be you. If corporations don’t have to prove they actually lent you money, if corporations don’t have to prove they actually own an account, they can do pretty much whatever they want. Today they are trying to steal from me. Tomorrow it might be you. Unless you’re willing to put a stop to this abuse of our court system.

Our future is in your hands.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsPBVNecOMo

A little girl asked her father, ‘How did the human race appear?’

The father answered, ‘God made Adam and Eve and they had children and so was all mankind made.’

Two days later the girl asked her mother the same question.

The mother answered, ‘Many years ago there were monkeys from which the human race evolved.’

The confused girl returned to her father and said, ‘Dad, how is it possible that you told me the human race was created by God, and Mom said they developed from monkeys?’

The father answered, ‘Well, dear, it is very simple. I told you about my side of the family and your mother told you about hers.’

Have you ever noticed how easy it is to think, come up with ideas and solutions, when you’re doing something simple and routine, something that requires no thought in of itself?

My most productive times are when I’m taking a shower and washing dishes. I’ve been doing both of these chores long enough that I have the routine down pretty good. I don’t have to think much about what I’m doing.

Well, the other day I was doing my husbandly duties, washing dishes, and a thought popped into my head. It rattled around in the empty space for a few seconds until it got my attention: “Why don’t attorneys at law do what you do?” I gave it my patented response: How should I know? Hoping it would just go away and let me finish the dishes in peace.

But, no. It kept persisting. It wanted more of my time. It wanted me to formulate a reasonable answer.

So, I gave it a few more minutes. After a little thought, the answer became obvious: follow the money.

Attorneys are always on the side of the money, or so they think. In this case the banks. They must think, if we sue the debtor, and he doesn’t pay, we can get our fees from the bank. They’re always good for it.

Which just goes to show you how dumb attorneys at law really are.

It seems to me, if you defended the debtor, and counter sued the bank, for a lot more money than the debtor owed, you would end up making a lot more money and still have the bank footing the bill.

Wonder how long it’ll take these professional geniuses to figure this out?

By Andrew M. Gordon

Banks are tightening lending standards to businesses and would-be homeowners. But not to individuals with a hankering for plastic. Less than 10 percent of banks are tightening standards for credit card applications.

For the economy to turn around, individuals have to stop living off their credit cards. (If you’re in debt, how can you save? How can you follow my investment tips? How can you sleep at night?)

More people are defaulting on credit cards these days, but not enough to dissuade banks from issuing high-interest cards to anybody with a heartbeat. The banks are borrowing money at such low rates that the higher rates they’re charging on credit cards are making them a bundle. Defaults on those cards would have to spike before they would think twice and cut back on continuing to issue them.

Look, the banks are out for themselves. So you need to be out for yourself. Tear up those credit card offers. Let’s not help the banks push us - or the economy - over the edge.

(Andrew Gordon, is the editor of INCOME, a monthly financial advisory service that uncovers income-generating stocks that promise safety (first and foremost), along with much-higher-than-average profit potential.)

“Ideas are easy, doing stuff is hard….

“History is littered with inventors who had ‘great’ ideas but kept them quiet and then poorly executed them. And history is lit up with do-ers who took ideas that were floating around in the ether and actually made something happen. In fact, just about every successful venture is based on an unoriginal idea, beautifully executed.”

(Source: Seth Godin’s blog)

A man’s way of doing things is the direct result of the way he thinks about things.

To do things in a way you want to do them, you will have to acquire the ability to think the way you want to think; this is the first step towards getting rich.

To think what you want to think is to think TRUTH, regardless of appearances.

Every man has the natural and inherent power to think what he wants to think, but it requires far more effort to do so than it does to think the thoughts which are suggested by appearances.  To think according to appearances is easy; to think truth regardless of appearances is laborious, and requires the expenditure of more power than any other work man is called upon to perform.

There is no labor from which most people shrink as they do from that of sustained and consecutive thought; it is the hardest work in the world.  This is especially true when truth is contrary to appearances.  Every appearance in the visible world tends to produce a corresponding form in the mind which observes it; and this can only be prevented by holding the thought of the TRUTH.

Wallace D. Wattles

The Science of Getting Rich, 1910

Abraham Lincoln was very concerned with character, but he was also aware of the importance of having a good reputation. He explained the difference this way: “Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.”

Put another way, your reputation is what people think of you. Your character is what you actually are.

In a world preoccupied with image, it’s easy to worry too much about our reputation and too little about our character. Building a reputation is largely a public-relations project; building character requires us to focus on our values and actions. Noble rhetoric and good intentions aren’t enough.

What we’re looking for is moral strength based on ethical principles. Character is revealed by actions, not words, especially when there’s a gap between what we want to do and what we should do and when doing the right thing costs more than we want to pay.

Our character is revealed by how we deal with pressures and temptations. But it’s also disclosed by everyday actions, including what we say and do when we think no one is looking and we won’t get caught.

The way we treat people we think can’t help or hurt us (like housekeepers, waiters, and secretaries), tells more about our character than how we treat people we think are important. People who are honest, kind, and fair only when there’s something to gain shouldn’t be confused with people of real character who demonstrate these qualities habitually, under all circumstances.

Character is not a fancy coat we put on for show. It’s who we really are.

This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.

Michael Josephson
www.charactercounts.org

By Robert Ringer

I rarely watch a football game on TV from start to finish anymore, but this year’s Super Bowl was an exception. I really got caught up in the excitement of the miracle that unfolded before my eyes. Make that, Giant miracle.

But as I watched the multimillionaire Giant players celebrating their Super Bowl victory after the game, for some reason my thoughts drifted to how far removed we Americans are from the day-to-day realities of most of the world’s six billion+ people. With few exceptions, they will never experience the lifestyle of even the poorest Americans, let alone the fame and fortune enjoyed by professional athletes. For a majority of them, in fact, pain, suffering, and fear are a way of life.

A few days after those drifting thoughts of mine, my wife succeeded in dragging me to the movies for the first time in years. It was such an exhilarating experience that I plan on doing it again sometime in the next 10 years or so - provided I can save up enough money to afford both the tickets and the popcorn.

The movie was none other than the latest Rambo (starring, of course, the aging Sylvester Stallone), a grim reminder of the never-ending genocide in Burma (a.k.a. the Union of Myanmar). Part of the movie’s weak plot is based on Rambo’s warnings to a group of well-meaning but naive missionaries to go home… because their efforts in Burma were a waste of time.

Burma’s brutal, repressive military regime continues to systematically rape, pillage, torture, and murder the country’s minorities, particularly the Karen and Shan people. These military thugs have been in power since 1962, and I’d have to agree with Old Man Rambo that things aren’t about to change anytime soon.

Burma is also a reminder that when most of us think of the word holocaust, we mistakenly associate it only with the Jews who were exterminated by Germany’s Nazi regime during World War II. And when we think of the word slavery, our myopic American view focuses only on pre-Civil War African slaves in the U.S.

Unfortunately, both genocide and slavery are, and always have been, widespread. They have, in fact, been staples of human existence since at least the days of the ancient Greeks, and probably much earlier. Whether it’s Rwanda, Darfur, Tanzania, Sierra Leone, or any one of the nameless towns and villages throughout black Africa that are terrorized by thugs brandishing weapons made in Iran, North Korea, and China, genocide and slavery are alive and well.

I’m not suggesting that the U.S., or any other Western country, should intervene in any of these ongoing human tragedies. Thousands of years of recorded history have clearly demonstrated that well-meaning people don’t have the power to permanently end Third World suffering. We can’t even afford to repair our own infrastructure, let alone save victims of terror and oppression in other countries.

While pondering the continued existence of slavery and genocide throughout the world, I also thought about the current batch of scoundrels running for the highest office in the land. They all have at least one thing in common: They employ their favorite euphemisms (e.g., “change”) to hide their intent to further increase government power over ordinary citizens.

Amazingly, these masters of deceit are revered by millions. Especially by those politically sedated humanoids who cheer wildly and pump signs into the air as their political heroes work them into a frenzy with the same tired platitudes that have been used by politicians throughout recorded history.

The airlines warn us to put on our own oxygen masks first so we will be in a better position to help our children. Good analogy, because as I watch those ecstatic sign holders on TV dutifully playing out their roles as political sheep, it occurs to me that folks who are interested in lessening pain and suffering in the world might do well to first concentrate on what is happening right here in America. Most Americans are so lost that they have come to actually love their servitude.

The war against tyranny is never-ending. We may never become another Burma or Bosnia, but, aside from the varying degrees of violence, slavery by any other name is still slavery. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World painted a pretty stark picture of that reality.

New York Giants Eli Manning, David Tyree (who made the now-famous “helmet catch” on the winning Super Bowl drive), and Michael Strahan are great athletes who excel at playing a great game. And for that, they deserve the applause they receive. But they are not heroes. And no matter how great the game of football is, it is still only a game.

You, on the other hand, can be a hero. How? By learning all you can about the concept of liberty. By educating yourself about the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the true intent of our founding fathers. And by sharing your knowledge with as many people as possible.

Gradualism and lethargy have worked in tandem over the past hundred years to make the odds against steering America back to its original foundation almost impossible to overcome. Almost - but not completely. To the extent you work at spreading the gospel of liberty to others - explaining to as many people as possible why liberty must be given a higher priority than allother objectives - you are a hero.

By all means, enjoy sports and other forms of entertainment as a respite from the daily cares of life. But, for the sake of your children and grandchildren, keep those things in perspective and don’t allow them to distract you from what is happening in the real world. Allocating a portion of your time and energy resources to help prevent a further slide toward totalitarianism in the U.S. is a good investment.

And the nice thing is that it doesn’t even require a license to become a bona fide hero… yet.

“Take the obvious, add a cupful of brains, a generous pinch of imagination, a bucketful of courage and daring, stir well and bring to a boil.”

- Bernard Mannes Baruch