We live during a time that the family is constantly under attack by both internal and external pressures. If we have a spouse that is not abusive nor an adulterer and is generally a good person trying to do the right thing then it should be our goal to do every thing in our power to make and keep things right with them and our relationship. That opening quote is one that we need to take time to remember on a daily basis.

Recently, I saw an internet post & picture, the picture was of an elderly couple laying on their bed, the wife holding her frail (and probably ill) husband in her arms, at that moment she was looking up reflecting. She remembered once being asked a question “how did your marriage last over 65 years?” her response was “we come from an era that we didn’t throw away things that were broken, instead we did everything we could to fix them!”

WOW, absolutely simple and absolutely powerful! Consider an old phrase “the grass is not always greener on the other side”

I submit, that we return to focusing on the family unit staying a unit even through the tough times (considering the caveats of my 2nd sentence); we made the decision to get together, now let’s make the decision to STAY TOGETHER! If you happen to be on a 2nd, 3rd, 4th or how many number of marriages, endeavor to break the cycle and make this one work. I challenge us all, take a moment every day, to remember at least 1 thing that made you fall in love with your husband or wife in the first place, then when the little problems that challenge your relationship arise (and they will) you’ll have something fresh in mind to compare the problem against.

Hmmm…who knew you could smile when you’re angry? Will you accept the challenge, what other helpful tips can you suggest or have heard of?

The article above is a short read from the Denver Post; it looks at gas prices and asks the question of why so much change in prices. Like me I’m sure most consumers wonder exactly why does the price of gasoline go up and down (mostly up the past few years) at such an alarming rate and frequency. The article’s question of “Why are gasoline prices so high?” is the automobile drivers billion dollar question to the crude oil industry. In addition the article’s Q&A provides one answer that should be alarming to most: “Investment in oil futures contracts by pension funds, mutual funds, hedge funds, exchange traded funds and other investors who aren’t going to actually use oil has risen dramatically in the last decade. Much of this money is betting that oil prices will rise.” Why should that answer be alarming? Because while the investment funds themselves don’t use the oil/gasoline the people that are putting their money into these funds do, with particular interest on the retirement funds mostly funded by the average worker who in most cases is hit the hardest by rising fuel costs (gasoline, home heating oil, and natural gas). To know that the funds we put our money into, to set up for our own futures, is a part of the cause that is deeply impacting our present should be an alarming fact.

Please comment to let us know: Overall, do you buy the answers given in the article?

President Obama unveiled a $3.8 trillion budget request Monday that hikes taxes on the rich, spends new money on infrastructure and education, but does little to reform the entitlement programs that pose the biggest long-term threat to the federal budget. Pres. Obama said “We built this budget around the idea that our country has always done best when everyone gets a fair shot…” Below is a fox news commentary segment: http://public.media.foxnews.com/021412/021412_al_economypanel_W700.wmv                        

My argument against specific comments that were made:

1.    One commentator speaks of businesses going under, but neglects to mention the OVERALL unemployment numbers, if employment is low then the main street businesses (mom & pops and up to the under capitalized businesses, less than 500K in annual revenues) find themselves most hit by lowered spending by the masses. This in turn impacts the bottom line of each of those businesses. Which by the way are not in a position to receive funding from the investment world and big banks looking for higher rate of return (these such business are interdependent, for survival, on the general public having cash to spend), most have the ability to self fund, or stem the tide, for a year or two maybe three but not more!      2.    Talks of higher debt but does not accept the fact that the current administration inherited not created the current debt load, or shall I say precursor to debt Armageddon!

My general argument toward all:

1.    RE: The call into question of experience (or in-experience) of the Pres. Obama and his staff as chief executives and not having the high level experience of budgeting and business development. The phenomenon of business senior executives moving into the world of politics as senior officers (of states and the federal government), that is in the numbers seen today, only began roughly 20 years ago. I’m speaking of the: George H.W. Bush, Michael Bloomberg, Chris Christie’s, etc. Most CEO types chose to stay clear of being policy makers and budget masters and rather wanted to be involved politically only on the fund-raising and campaign trails with interest in seeking residual benefit from backing a winner (nothing wrong with that fact; I call it “Walking with a Tiger”; and am certainly in favor of a capitalist society). But this fact stabs at such indications of “lack of budget making experience” as politics in the formidable years of our country was left to those that made their life and life’s work that of being a politician; with emphasis on “Of the people and for the people”. Capitalism is a great thing at its best, it allows for opportunity to create what you want in this country, the problem is when capitalist ideas spill over into that of pushing (or seeking) for political gain and mis-placed benefit.    2. For those that argue de-regulation of the banking industry as one of the key components that lead to the mortgage crisis, while correct in principle they are not correct in the history of laying blame with former Pres. Clinton only, it actually began with Pres. Reagan as was his effort to ease restriction on capital gains and new market creation opportunity for the industries and corporations that he was in the pocket of. Due to the spill over of capitalism (the financial gain) into the higher world of politics, the cycle continued through each subsequent presidency to finally the point of where we are today.

What say you my readers? Does any of this make sense and which is the best, and most important, the correct argument?

Above is a link to AAA/Auto Club of NY re: Driver Training Offerings

(Make sure to scroll to bottom to take part in my poll)

My industry is that of providing safe, quality transportation to clients that book with that expectation. The ability to provide, what I feel is the key component “Safe” transportation, is determined by a number of factors. Most of these factors hinge upon the ability of the driver of their (the customer’s) car and the other drivers on the road at the moment). While my company and most other transportation providers require a “standard of safety”, which includes driver capability, testing, training and monitoring, unfortunately that requirement only impacts roughly 10% of the vehicles on the road, that is “professional” drivers whom are licensed as such. Our industry standards do not have impact on the greater majority of other drivers on the roads daily. While I have faith that almost everyone on the road means well and has the intention of moving between their destinations in a safe manner, it is their skill as a driver (or a higher power) that actually dictates most outcomes of driver travel. That most important skill set, which includes knowledge that isn’t being given proper and necessary attention, after a driver completes their involuntary 5 hour driver education during the process of getting their driver’s license for the 1st time. While this is truth in fact, I do not blame the average driver themself, I place that blame solely upon the shoulders of each state that issues and regulates driver licenses. Its my opinion that each agency should make continued driver education and remedial training a necessity for every individual to maintain a valid driver license. I know those reading this are already thinking “so I’m going to have to pay more to keep driving?” or “who is going to pay for this?”. Actually, we are already paying for it by the fees we pay to the DMV to maintain our driver licenses everyday and the insurance fees to keep our vehicles on the road. Each state agency has its own standard requirement on the fees it collects, Driver Education if offered by the local DMV’s – Dept. of Motor Vehicles could and would be at no cost to each driver (again as a standard requirement) . When we consider the cost for, increasing insurance premiums as a result of more unskilled drivers on the road having accidents, downtime for repairs when a vehicle is damaged in an accident and possible personal downtime due to injury or loss of life, the trade-off of requiring & providing education on the rules of the road and defensive driving techniques just makes sense!

In closing, how many times have those that are “good drivers” asked the question “what the heck is that person doing, do they know how to drive?” While forming your opinion on this posting consider how many times you’ve said that and/or how many times you may have avoided an accident due to the un-skilled driving of someone else. Our roadways are seeing more and more volume every day; safety & driver education/re-education needs to increase right along with the number of vehicles on the road!

Let me know what you think?? 

For more go to The Poughkeepsie Journal web-site link: http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/article/20120104/NEWS01/120104014/Cuomo-Investment-economic-development-tourism-key-2012?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|PoughkeepsieJournal.com

limomangary’s thoughts on the article and subject:

of course newt gingrich is going to make such a “radical statement” that pres. obama has failed. anyone that thinks this headline is a truly shocking statement has not been paying attention for the last 10 – 12 months. the republican party ran poor campaigns (presidency, senate, house) and got their heads handed to them in a clean sweep; their constituents (republican voters) are not in a good mood so now there must be a bombardment of ‘out-for-blood’ negative sentiment in order to regain trust that they plan to do something about it. in thinking more about the overall feelings about and within the republican party, let’s also not forget the choice by longtime GOP senator arlen spector, an Independent by thought and nature, to switch parties to democratic. remember you can be Independent on either side of the major party lines but his switch was one that is symbolic of the trouble within the republican party. while they’re making changes behind the scenes, fundamental changes and establishing the new faces of the party for 2010 and beyond, their political front has to posture like this! bare in mind ‘big politics’ is one of sentiment and trust, and if the constituency feels they can not trust their party leaders to do the job (tow the party line) then they either leave the party (following mr. spector) or don’t support the party as a whole. also don’t forget that immediately after the presidential election there were statements from the party about gaining the young vote and the necessity to step up such efforts. one of the greatest tools of catching the eye of young voters, on either side of party lines, is ‘shock and awe’. the younger generation rides the coat-tails of topics that energize them, having shock value (look no further than the success of reality t.v. shows, in mass droves, over the last 10 years their appeal to specifically the 18 - 30 year olds). don’t take this personally if this pertains to you as it is meant as a statement of generality; old & stodgy methodical ways once considered the backbone of politics no longer wins elections or support. it seems that the republican party is finally catching on in that matter. i am less concerned and interested in comments by gingrich and others like him and more concerned and interested in the behind the scenes activity i mentioned previously and the eventual ‘bringing to light’ of the newly formed republican party and the faces of the party in the next 2 years. eventually there will be the anti-obama from the ‘republican right’ that will stand toe-to-toe, the question is whether president obama and the democratic left will be prepared for a matching whirl-wind like the one they created in 2008.

http://money.cnn.com/2009/05/21/smallbusiness/banks_wary_of_arc_loans.smb/index.htm

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The Small Business Administration plans to begin dispersing funds in mid-June for a new, highly anticipated emergency lending program, but don’t race off to the bank to fill out an application just yet. Many lenders are still sitting on the sidelines, waiting for more details from the SBA before they decide whether or not to participate.

“What is the economic incentive for banks to make these loans?” asked Arne Monson, president of Holtmeyer & Monson, a consulting firm that works with small business lenders.

That’s a question many potential participants are asking right now as they await formal guidelines from the SBA for the “America’s Recovery Capital” program. Created as part of the stimulus bill, the initiative aims to bring temporary relief to established small business suffering through the recession.

Borrowers can apply for interest-free loans of up to $35,000 to help cover their payments for six months on existing debt, with no repayment due on the ARC loan for 12 months. The loans will come from banks and other authorized lenders, but the SBA will offer those lenders a 100% guarantee on the loans – meaning that if the business owner defaults, the government foots the bill.

That’s great in theory, but potential lenders are wary of how it will play out. Banks have spent years wrangling with the SBA over the bureaucracy of collecting on the agency’s loan guarantees. ARC loans are intended to go to businesses that are “viable” but also suffering “financial hardship,” and until the SBA offers more specifics, bank officials say they are leery about making the correct call on which applicants they should green-light for loans.

“If there is a faulty closing or process at the bank level and SBA voids the guarantee – which has higher likelihood in this program – the bank will face a total loss at that point,” Monson noted.

Another concern for bankers: ARC loans are intended to be interest-free for borrowers, who will only have to repay the principal. That caused much grumbling in an online comment forum hosted by Coleman Publishing, a trade publisher for SBA lenders.

“‘Interest free to the borrower?’ Why would we do that?,” wrote one commenter.

“There needs to be greater clarification on what will motivate the banks to make these loans. We have scarce resources,” another banker wrote.

SBA officials say they expect lenders’ doubts to disappear as the agency finishes working out, and releases, more details on how the ARC loans will work. For example, while the SBA doesn’t yet know what interest rate it will pay banks for ARC loans, that amount won’t be zero. The agency will subsidize every loan, making some sort of interest payment to the banks on the borrower’s behalf.

Some banks will join the ARC program simply for the civic value of helping small business customers, but others say they won’t participate unless it’s in their financial interests to do so. One official at a major SBA lender, who declined to speak publicly, said that the loans’ small size and bureaucratic overhead mean they probably won’t be a “profitable, effective solution” for his bank.

Potential borrowers are also clamoring for specifics. The SBA hasn’t said yet said precisely which businesses and what kinds of debt will qualify for ARC loan relief, though it has begun filling in the outlines of its plan. This week the agency said it considers a “viable” small business to be one that has been profitable in at least one of the past three years. ARC loans can be used to pay down a line of credit, a credit card, or a bank loan, but the stimulus bill’s rules forbid the loans from being used to make payments on SBA-backed loans made before February of this year.

More details will be communicated to banks by June 8, according to SBA officials. The agency expects ARC loans to be available to borrowers by June 15.

That date can’t come soon enough for some potential applicants. “There’s no question this loan is a big issue for us,” said Jay Cullimore, president of Tropical Lights Inc., an online lighting retailer. “It’s been effort to stay alive and grow.”

After six years in business, Cullimore took out $20,000 line of credit in mid-2008 for his Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based business. Now, nearly a year later, his sales are down 50%, he’s had to lay off four employees, and the interest rate on his credit line has zoomed from 7% to 25%.

Cullimore approached his bank, which participates in the SBA’s loan-guarantee programs, for more details on ARC loans, but the bank was unable to give him any guidance on when or how he might be able to apply.

“I can’t believe any bank would be unhappy that I’d be able to pay down the line, but it feels like the SBA is an insider job,” Cullimore said. “If you don’t know people who are connected, you won’t get it.”

Borrowers can apply for an ARC loan from any lender that certified for participation in the SBA’s programs. If his own bank doesn’t get on board, Cullimore plans to seek a loan from another.

In the stimulus bill, Congress allocated $255 million to support the ARC loan program. That money covers only the program’s subsidies, for interest payments and defaults, allowing the money to stretch to support a larger dollar-volume of lending. The SBA is still calculating how much the program will be able to lend, but it forecasts that the ARC loans will be available to 10,000 small businesses.

“We believe the lenders are ready to go,” said Eric Zarnikow, the SBA’s associate administrator for capital access. “We believe many have been looking at portfolios and customers and good candidates for ARC loans already. We have the expectation they’ve already thought about it.”

Some have. At Webster Bankin Waterbury, Conn., Bob Polito is anxious to start making loans. He trusts the SBA to draw up reasonable policies, and he’s willing to settle for whatever interest rate the agency sets for the loans.

“We want to make sure [the ARC loans] are beneficial to us, but there’s also the goodwill aspect of just helping our borrowers,” said Polito, Webster Bank’s director of government-guaranteed lending. Come June 15, when the SBA begins backing ARC loans, he plans to pounce.

“I’ll be at my computer signed into the server at midnight to make sure we get those funds to borrowers who will benefit,” he said. “The only concern I have is that the funds will go too quickly.” 

limomangary’s thought and response on this article:

as i read this article i saw obvious points in which my level of confidence, in the possibility of this money reaching the hands of SBO’s (small business owner’s) most in need, grew smaller and smaller. the article reads of bankers, most but not all, that are not interested in offering bailout assistance to the SBO level of borrower. take a look at some of the quotes: the 1st two are from the blog & banker comments mentioned in this article

1. “‘Interest free to the borrower?’ Why would we do that?, wrote one commenter.”
2. “There needs to be greater clarification on what will motivate the banks to make these loans. We have scarce resources, another banker wrote.”
3. “One official at a major SBA lender, who declined to speak publicly, said that the loans’ small size and bureaucratic overhead mean they probably won’t be a “profitable, effective solution” for his bank.”

This quote in the article is especially troubling to me, read between the lines of the bolded area: “ARC loans are intended to go to businesses that are ‘viable’ but also suffering financial hardship, and until the SBA offers more specifics, bank officials say they are leery about making the correct call on which applicants they should green-light for loans.”

in other words this may turn out ot be another non-inclusionary program that really isn’t a bail out for the SBO’s, the ones that really need cash. these quotes show a general lack of interest in the small business arena by some of the same people that just accepted TARP money…money given to them for doing nothing but being a central part of the mess of things of this economy and the struggles most are enduring! if one can not see the “civic value”, as quoted by one person in this article, then they have no intrest in developing the communities in which their banks hold interest and locations. certainly they are in the money & paper business with the purpose of turning profits, but the sheer fact that a good number refuse to see beyond the need to float the major enterprise and reach down to the small biz that can possibly become an enterprise one day is just the sad state of our current system of capitalization. our country was founded and ascended to greatness because of capitalism but it was done so in a way that didn’t box out the people that could one day be a part of that cycle of growth thorugh capitalism. today there isn’t that same prevailing feeling and effort, even by some of the same people that just were handed $$$ to cure their mistakes!

most of this post has been dedicated to critical comments on matters within this article, but i do need to take a moment to commend guys like Bob Polito of Webster Bank in Connecticut on his comments: “We want to make sure [the ARC loans] are beneficial to us, but there’s also the goodwill aspect of just helping our borrowers,” said Polito, Webster Bank’s director of government-guaranteed lending. Come June 15, when the SBA begins backing ARC loans, he plans to pounce. I’ll be at my computer signed into the server at midnight to make sure we get those funds to borrowers who will benefit, he said. The only concern I have is that the funds will go too quickly.”  now whether his comments and efforts are altruistic, philanthropic, or even capitalistic he seems to “get it”; the “it” factor is to succeed in the future you need and want as many other people to do the same…there needs to be both people creating ideas and businesses and people with money to consume the products and services that are being provided, if too many people get left behind well then eventually everybody looses! i will still remain optimistic that the plan will come to fruition and prove beneficial; keep checking back to see what updates come down the pike.

Thanks again for stoping by the blog; here’s to prosperity for us all!

limomangary’s thought and response to the article:

As a small business owner currently boxed out of loans and deal flow because of a mess created by the people that were supposed to be smarter with letters like MBA & Ph.D behind their names. (I don’t begrudge them their success, rather I am distressed by such a colossal mess made and how difficult they have made things for the next generation of entrepreneurs) Let’s see if this newly introduced plan talked about in this article is actually a way for the distressed business to right it’s ship through an offering that actually takes into consideration that the business owner’s personal credit might now be in shambles because they so deeply believed in what they were creating and thus put all of their money in their business or that the business is distressed due to the current state of the economy? Will banks and SBA programs actually say we’ll help your small business based upon your idea and strong business plans and not based upon your current financial picture? To each we’ll see; I’ll be the 1st in line and will certainly report back on my findings, stay tuned….