The link below will take you to the current “Money and Markets” newsletter by Martin Weiss.  He is an investment advisor that I have been aware of for many years.  I think he is a good and wise investment advisor.  This newsletter was published yesterday February 23, 2009.  It is entitled “Red Alert: Major Meltdown Imminent - Your Escape.”  Every newsletter from anyone is also an advertisement for their newsletter.  Don’t let that bother you.  Over the years I have learned a lot from advertisements that contained a lot of good information.  You don’t need to subscribe to his newsletter.  I trust him because virtually all the information in this newsletter is free.  Even if he would normally charge for the information (like the Banking Survival Guide mentioned below) he is not asking for any money for this information now.  Dr. Weiss tells you what to do with your bank accounts and investments to preserve them for the future. His advice is free and his recommendations are extremely conservative and he won’t make a dime on any of it.

http://www.moneyandmarkets.com/red-alert-major-meltdown-imminent-your-escape-29835

Some of you may bravely think, this is just another “the sky is falling” prediction and you don’t read or worry about sky is falling predictions.  Normally I have had a similar kind of reaction to gloom and doom forecasters.  However, I now believe the sky is falling (at least our economic sky is falling) and now would not be a good time to think you are going to be immune to it.

There is a saying “Knowledge is Power.”  There is another statement in scripture, “If ye are prepared ye shall not fear.”  I think now would be a good time to combine those two statements.  I don’t think, with today’s economy, now is a good time to think that “ignorance is bliss.”  Today ignorance may harm you a great deal.  I think you should arm yourself with as much good Knowledge of the current economic situation as you can get so you can have as much power over your situation as possible.  Then I think you should take appropriate steps to be as prepared as possible so you will not fear.  The linked newsletter will help you do that if you are able to follow the recommendations.

There is a lot of good knowledge in the linked newsletter with some specific steps that you should take to protect your investments and bank accounts from the current and coming economic difficulties.  I recommend that you take the recommended steps.  They are not radical or weird investment schemes. 

Here is basically what he recommends for our current economic situation:

Dr Weiss recommends that you have all of your liquid money in FDIC insured bank accounts under the FDIC insurance limit in strong financial institutions.  Larger amounts of money and investments should be in short term Treasury securities (less than one year maturity).  You can invest in Treasury securities directly through the Treasury, but the easiest way is through money market mutual funds that are invested 100% in Short Term Treasury Securities backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government. Whether you buy Treasury securities directly or through mutual funds you realize the same full faith and credit backing of the government.  You can have easier access to your Treasury Security investments in a money market mutual fund than invested directly with the Treasury. There is a $250,000 limit on an FDIC insured bank account.  There is no limit to the amount you can put in Treasury securities including through money market mutual funds.  So, up to $250,000 should go in an FDIC insured bank account.  Anything over that amount should go in a short term Treasury security investment.  401K’s usually have Treasury Security money market mutual funds as part of the 401K.  He doesn’t recommend any stock market investments at the current time.  This kind of philosophy will protect you from any banking problems in the future.  This is Safe Haven investing.  Talk to your investment advisor, if you have one, about Dr Weiss’s recommendations.  If you ask my advice it is included in this paragraph.

There are many other links in this newsletter so you can study out the current situation as deeply as you want to from other sources.  There is even a link to Part II at the bottom.  I recommend that you read the entire newsletter including Part II.  Then you will be armed with as much power as you can muster for our current economic situation.

About a third of the way down the newsletter are five steps to take.  The third step has a link to a pdf file.  I recommend that you download the file at that link and read it and follow its recommendations.  Here is the link to the downloaded file if you would like to go there directly. The file is called “The Safe Money Banking Survival Guide.”

www.martinweiss.com/images/pdf/SMR0250_BankingSurvivalGuide.pdf

Here is the link again to the article by Martin Weiss.

http://www.moneyandmarkets.com/red-alert-major-meltdown-imminent-your-escape-29835

If you have not followed the counsel of spiritual leaders to obtain your emergency preparedness supplies, and a supply of food and other commodities, I strongly recommend that you follow that counsel now. You never know when we will need it.

Here is a link to counsel that I recommend everyone take for home storage.  This short document is entitled  - All is Safely Gathered In – Family Home Storage

www.providentliving.org/channel/0,11677,1706-1,00.html

Here is a link to counsel that I recommend everyone take for family financial management.  This short document is entitled – All is Safely Gathered In – Family Finances.

www.providentliving.org/channel/0,11677,1709-1,00.html

Pete Chagnon - OneNewsNow - 2/20/2009 6:15:00 AM

The mother of a 12-year-old girl whose pro-life speech has become a hit YouTube video says her daughter’s passion for the unborn is genuine.

Lia is a preteen from Canada who decided to speak out against abortion in her school’s speech contest, despite teachers and school officials who encouraged her to pick a different topic.
 
“What if I told you that right now someone was choosing if you were going to live or die? What if I told you that this choice wasn’t based on what you could or couldn’t do, what you had done in the past, or what you would do in the future? And what if I told you [that] you could do nothing about it? Fellow students and teachers, thousands of children are right now in that very situation,” she says in her speech.
 
Kimberly, Lia’s mother, says Lia was told by school officials that if she chose the topic of abortion, she would not be allowed to participate in the speech contest. But both were surprised when Lia’s pro-choice teacher had a change of heart.
 
“Her teacher was really impressed by this speech and perhaps moved by it, and therefore her teacher kind of was a real supporter of [Lia] winning for the class,” Kimberly notes. “And she had to go through a couple of hoops and get clearance from a couple of other teachers before she could be declared winner of the class.”
 
Another controversy erupted when the panel of judges had a supposed big disagreement and one stepped down. Initially Lia was disqualified, but later the panel declared her the winner. She was asked to take out this portion of her speech: “[F]etuses are definitely humans knit together in their mother’s womb by their wonderful Creator who knows them all by name.”
 
Kimberly says after Lia was told to remove that portion of her speech, she took time to think about her decision and ultimately decided to leave it in. Lia also competed in a regional speech competition but did not win. However, her speech has been viewed by over 200,000 people on YouTube.

Click here to watch her give the speech.

 http://www.nmatv.com/video/1318/Preteen-pro-life-speech-goes-viral

Here is a novel idea.  The U.S. government should nationalize the big banks in the United States like Citibank and Bank of America.  Supposedly this would provide confidence to the American consumer and the rest of the world.

 Is this a trial balloon by Katie Couric and her network to see how people react?

 Why not just nationalize all the banks in the country?  Then the government could force the banks to start lending again.  Such a move would surely give confidence to the rest of the world economies.  It would probably do wonders for the stock market also.

This news report video of today, February 20, is only one minute long but it is amazing to say the least.  Maybe our new Socialistic ways haven’t seen nutin yet.

 Click here-

http://townhall.com/blog/g/ddab72f0-5646-45eb-a3c8-17a0057c3368

Someone asked the question: What will the stock market do this year?  The answer:  It will fluctuate. 

When the stock market is low or going down it is good to keep “Dollar Cost Averaging” in mind.  The concept of “Dollar Cost Averaging” is that you keep investing the same amount every month (e.g. $100) regardless of whether the stock market is going up or down.  When the stock market is down you buy more shares for the $100 than you buy when the market is up.  The dollar cost averaging investor always does better than the average over time.  The average value will be greater than the average price.

Most people do the opposite.  When stocks go down they stop buying stock.  Dollar Cost Averaging investors keep putting investment money into the market every month and pay no attention to where the stock market is at the moment.  This concept takes advantage of the commonly accepted practice of buying more of an item when it is on sale and less when it is more expensive.  It does make sense.  Most people realize that this is a good idea for every other item they buy except stock.  This doesn’t make sense because when the market goes down  all the stocks are less expensive i.e. they are on sale.  Normal behavior says buy more when something you want is on sale.  Buy less when it is expensive.  Dollar Cost Averaging automatically does this. 

It is like the stock market stopped its rise October 9, 2007 and said,  ”you know, we have been going up for many years now and there are a lot of people out there who did not take advantage of this big rise so let’s take a break from rising for a while, go back down to the level it was several years ago to let all the people who didn’t get in when it was low several years ago time to get in, then we’ll start going back up again.”  How much better does it get than that?  As the stock market goes up to 14,000 (on the Dow) people say, “gee I wish I had invested years ago when the market was at 8000.”  Well the market has now gone to 8000.  People have short memories.

The stock market will go up over time unless the world as we know it is going to come to an end.  If society and the economy come to an end then it won’t matter what you did with your money.  We will all be in the same catastrophe boat together.  If society and the economy are not ready to come to an end then eventually the stock market will recover and come back up like it has always done.  Everyone who bought stock when the price was low, really low and on sale, will make a lot of money.  This is why Warren Buffet invested a lot of money in Goldman Sachs and other companies recently.  Everything is on sale.  The only difference between Warren Buffet and us is he invested $100 million (or was it a billion?), and we invest $100.  But, he was following the same thinking.

Here is an example of why dollar cost averaging makes you money:  You decide to start investing $100 every month.  The price of stock XYZ is $15.  So you invest your $100 and buy 6.666 shares of stock XYZ at $15.  Next month the price goes down to $10 and you invest your $100 again and buy 10 shares of XYZ stock at $10.  The next month the price goes up to $20 and you invest your $100 again and buy 5 shares of XYZ stock at $20.  The next month the price of the stock goes back down to $15.  Have you made any money on your investment?  It is the same price it started at 3 months ago and you bought stock at $20 and at $10 both of which are $5 more or $5 less than the average of $15.  The average value of the stock over the four months is $15 per share.  So apparently you have not made any money or lost any money.

Actually you made 8.3 % on your investment even though the price of the stock is the same as it started out.  He’s how you made 8.3%. 

You invested $300.  You bought 21.666 shares.  Your average cost was $13.85 per share ($300/21.666 shares = $13.8465 per share).  But the average value is $15 per share over the four months (15+10+20+15=60 / 4 = 15). So  15 / 13.85 = 1.083 or 8.3%.

Here is another way to calculate your increase.  You invested $300 ($100 x 3 = $300).  Your investment is now worth $324.99 (21.666 x $15 current value per share = $324.99)    $324.99 / 300 = 1.0833 or 8.3%.

The reason you made money is because you bought more shares when the price was low (10 shares) than you bought when the price was high (5 shares).  You bought more shares when the stock was on sale at $10 per share than you bought when the stock was expensive at $20 per share.  You made a smart decision to keep investing your $100 per month even though the price was going down.  When the price came back up to $15 per share you made more money on the 10 shares you bought at $10 per share (10 x $5 profit per share = $50 profit), than the money you lost on the 5 shares you bought at $20 per share (5 x $5 loss per share = $25 loss).  So your investment of $300 is now worth $324.99 and you made 8.3% on your money.

Mutual Funds are a good way to invest using Dollar Cost Averaging.  By investing in Mutual Funds you are automatically diversified.  You automatically invest in a portfolio of stocks so the risk is spread over many stocks.  You are never invested in one stock.  If you had invested all of your funds in one stock, e.g. Lehman Brothers or Bear Sterns, your investment may have no value now.  Right now is a good demonstration project of why you should not put all of your eggs in one basket.  Mutual Funds automatically take care of this for you.

A fluctuating market is good to the Dollar Cost Averaging investor.  Right now we are in the trough of the cycle.  The Dollar Cost Averaging investor likes troughs.  It gives him/her the opportunity to buy more shares at a lower price.  When the market comes back up all those shares you bought now during the screaming sale, when the Dow was at 8000 or even less, will be worth a lot.

Those of you who have a strong stomach for seriously bad predictions about the economy and the United States should click on the link below.  This link takes you to an interview with Gerald Celente the CEO of Trends Research Institute and the publisher of The Trends Journal.  He is predicting the worst economic collapse ever beginning in 2009.  I don’t know anything about the interviewer Russia Today.  The interview is interesting to say the least.  I have never heard of Gerald Celente but he has apparently been forecasting since 1980 so he is not a new guy off the street.

Click on this link.

http://www.russiatoday.com/guests/video/2114

If you don’t like Russia Today then how about an interview with Fox Business News in November 2008 right after the election.  Here he is being interviewed by a Fox Business correspondent.

http://www.dvorak.org/blog/2008/11/13/gerald-celente-of-the-trends-research-institute-predicts-doom-gloom-and-revolution-under-obama-rule/

This guy is not a crackpot.  Here is a list of major newspapers and other media in the U.S. and how they value Gerald Celente’s forecasting.

http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2008/11/top-trend-forecaster-says-were-going-to.html

Here is the web site of the Trends Research Institute, Gerald Celente’s own web site.

http://www.trendsresearch.com/

How is your emergency preparedness?  Even if this guy is only partially correct now would be a good time to check on your food storage.  Even if he is not correct at all now would be a good time to check on your food storage.  We have had plenty of warnings over the years.