Is winning a lottery a blessing or…

Do you think winning a lottery is a blessing or … a curse? Ok, let’s give it one more possibility, it can be neither. It can be neutral. But most often it is not. I remember reading my first article about lottery winners in my country (Lithuania). There were stories of ten people who won pretty big amounts. I was shocked to find out that for nine people out of the ten the winning became a curse. One lady managed to cope with a windfall, the rest stories were pitiful: some lost it all very fast, some got divorced, some started drinking and using drugs, a few got killed and maybe something else. I cannot remember all the details now.  

At the time I thought that the phenomena was local, but was surprised later than the same was true about people who won lotteries in England and United States and in other (civilized countries). Eventually I found out that people are just people and they are people everywhere. And human weakness to get a lot of money fast is inherent for us all. And that is the problem with the concept of making money fast. A lot of money fast most often breaks people because they are not prepared for it. 

When a person is trying to do business and accumulates wealth over a period of time, he/she learns how to deal with capital. So, when he/she finally starts making millions or even more, these huge amounts of money does not break the person. He is ready to accept it and not start doing some crazy stuff. It requires patience, stamina, desire, persistence to do business, make money slowly, and start again after a failure until you reach what you want in terms of financial prosperity. 

A lot of people do not feel they want to pay the price or they do not believe that they ever going to see success. However, they still want to be rich. Therefore, they choose lottery playing. It is legal, does not cost much and if you win much you can go after your dreams the next day. My wife’s sister lives in New York and she told me how her colleagues at work tell her that if they win the lottery this weekend, they will not show up at work next week. 

So many of us do what we don’t like and never really pursue what we desire. I really think it is the price of going after our dreams that scares us most. And most of us are too lazy and get stuck in our comfort zones. We don’t get what we want, but we still can bear what we have. In order not to lose what we have we decide not to risk anything, except maybe buying a lottery ticket for a few bucks or whatever it costs. I believe we need to sit down, think what we want, make a plan how to achieve it and go for it. It might take a long time to achieve, but what we will get will be ours and it won’t break us. So, is lottery winning a blessing or a …?

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Reasons to make Google my homepage

Social responsibility of BP

Social responsibility

I believe that all companies whatever business they do should carry some social responsibility. They should be responsible for the effect that they have on society and the environment. It has been around a year since the disaster in the Gulf Mexico. The oil leaking has caused and is still causing tremendous problems to the residents of the territory, environment and maybe to some extent entire world. Economy, tourism, business and many other things have experienced tremendous damage as a consequence. What should be behavior of BP, the sole culprit in the situation?

To tell the truth I do not believe that they would be financially able to compensate for all the loss that they have done through the accident. They have spent billions of dollars to repair the situation, but it is definitely not enough. I mean, how much is necessary in order for everything to come back to where the territory has been before the tragedy. I believe they should be doing reparations as long as the situation comes back to normal. To tell the truth I also do not think they should be allowed to drill in the territory. 

It’s part of their social responsibility. I know that they are doing business, but if their business is causing more damage to the environment and people, their business, whoever they are is not worth the price. However, after things calmed down a bit they dare to think that they will have a chance to continue drilling in the territory again. If they do not assume social responsibility it should be social responsibility of politicians’ to stop them. I mean, whatever excuses they or other guys may have, if they cannot provide guarantees that their endeavors will not present any dangers to the environment it is not worth allowing them to do business. 

Social responsibility is a deficit nowadays. Money, profit, lobbying, lying has become much bigger values. I hope this can change some day, but the present trend is appalling. I hope we will not self destruct ourselves by allowing these ‘big guys’ (in various sectors) to do what they intend. 

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Do you want to be part of royal family

Would you want to be part of royal family

So, would you? There are so many talks about the wedding and it looks as if the entire internet is full of it. The idea of somebody becoming a member of the British royal family sounds great, but what does that take to be one. I was reading about the things that Kate Middleton will no longer be able to do after becoming Prince William’s wife. The list is pretty big. For her it would be a completely different life than she used to have.

Well, I think these are too light words. When anybody gets married his/her life changes. This becomes even stronger when you get children. Now, becoming a princess of Wales is a completely different story. You will have to forget who you are and accept an entirely different identity. This starts from how you are going to be referred to and ends with when you have to finish your dinner. No democracy for Kate anymore. If you are hungry, hurry up, for when the Queen finishes eating, everybody finishes. 

No more voting, no possibility to work (for most people this one would be pretty cool) don’t know for how long though)). Everything she says from this time on can have nothing which could cause some controversy. Get ready to be discussed by media from all possible aspects. In my opinion, no personality left. What do you get in exchange? Respect, absolute provision, iconic state, public attention and … becoming the Queen one day. 

I hope you can see how Rose (Kate Winslet in the movie ‘Titanic’) felt being part of the higher society and what happiness really meant for her. You can also sympathize with Anna Scott (Julia Roberts in the movie ‘Notting Hill’) for not being able just to be a simple girl and to be loved and not be pursued by the media. It looked to me that princess Diana was pretty tired of her responsibilities and was thirsty for personal happiness too. 

Well, it is none of my business anyway. I hope the couple will be able to create a world of their own and find happiness there. It will not be easy for Kate I think as she is from a completely different world. However, it is her choice. God bless them. So, would you be willing to be part of the royal family?

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Thoughts about aliens

Thoughts about aliens

In the post I wanted to share a few of my thoughts regarding aliens. Former Canadian defence minister Paul Hellyer has been speaking quite a bit about UFO’s and our inadequate reactions to their warnings about our behavior towards the earth we live in. I always wondered why official authorities started coming up with various facts about aliens. This particularly intensified when crisis hit 2008. It is very interesting why we should listen to some strange warnings from some inhabitants from other planets when we get more serious warnings from common sense, religion and many other sources. 

I do not mean to play some wise guy who knows everything and tells that there is no life in other planets. I simply state that this question, as well as other many other questions try to divert our attention from real problems (such as financial crisis that we have recently experienced) and their causes rather than answer them. I mean, pick up the Bible and you will get much more serious warnings and explanations why we live as we live and why there is so much evil around us and in us. Why listen to some alien coming from other planet? If they are real, who knows how they live there, maybe they have some kind of dictatorship there and try to do the same thing here. Well, I do not believe they exist in the first place. And even if they existed, I would not listen to them. 

I believe it is also a good source for commercial purposes. What a cool topic for writing a book, produce a movie! We enjoy mysteries, secrets, mysticism and things like that. There is a lot of commotion about 2012 and the end of the world, Mayan calendar and etc. It sows fear in people’s minds, but does not show real reasons for a possible collapse that could happen in 2012. There definitely could be a collapse in economic and social security spheres. Why? Nations are increasing their national debts in geometrical progression and the day is coming when they will no longer be able to pay off those debts. 

They will also no longer be able to pay pensions if nobody finances their budget deficits. And you do not need aliens to tell you that. And you do not need prophets to tell you that. Look at how our financial system is functioning and you will see that disaster is coming. And you will know why. You cannot spend more than you make. So, I do believe there is God, but I do not believe there are aliens and they try to send us some weird signals about the changes that we need to make. We have the same and even more signals everywhere around us. Let us simply open our eyes. 

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How long are commodities going to climb up

How long are commodities going to climb up

We have been seeing gold, silver, oil and other commodities going up for a considerable period of time. I want to talk a little bit today on my expectations for further direction in the market. Ben Bernanke declared that recession of 2008 is over. He and the rest of FED together with the Congress and the Senate decided that the best way to put global economy back on track is to stimulate it by pumping it with printed money. We should also not forget that the money that is thrown into economy is debt based. So, the debt will be put on the shoulders of taxpayers. 

I have been looking at the areas where the printed money was distributed in the economy and saw that much of it was used for creating new working places. Unfortunately, most of the positions were not stable places in manufacturing or other places that create additional value, but merely short term projects. It was also somewhat strange to see the attempt to stimulate construction sector, which still has a few million of unoccupied houses. Why stimulate it? Let the market clean up, reach the bottom and then start going up. 

Anyway, when so much money is poured into economy and there are plans to pour out more, you can be sure that at some point inflation will skyrocket. It won’t start very quick, but after some time it will start rising pretty fast. Where do you think you can invest when inflation starts rising at an alarming rate. Definitely not in stocks as high inflation makes it difficult for companies to borrow money for working capital and investments due to high interest rates that usually stay very high when inflation is raging in a global economy. 

So, where would you want to invest? You would want to invest somewhere more tangible and not some paper securities. You would want to invest into things: gold, silver, oil, rice, sugar and etc, which are commonly known as commodities. Oil usually precedes any inflation as high prices of oil cause all prices of products and then services to go up, because all global economy is tied to prices of oil. It is a global currency, which reflects the prices of products in most market sectors. So, when inflation starts picking up people get worried about their wealth as it starts disappearing as snow which melts at the beams of spring sun. 

Investors seeing the situation start putting their money into commodities, mostly gold and silver as these protect your money and wealth best from raging inflation and also help you to increase your capital immensely. So, if you asked me how long commodities are going to rise, I can tell you, as long as money is printed and economy is stimulated artificially with paper stuff that loses value on a daily basis. Therefore, I would encourage you to think how you could protect your capital. In my opinion, it is by investing in commodities. There will be retracements, which will give you good opportunities to enter the market. I believe you should do it. Good luck in your investments. 

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Globalization or monopolization

Causes of 2008 financial crisis

Reasons to make Google my homepage

Googler thoughts on globalization

Globalization or monopolization

Globalization is a pretty popular word now. It simply means world functioning as one unit in politics, economy, trade and maybe even culture. Most people would tell you how good it is to have free movement of goods and people and ability to work in a country of your dreams, but they hardly realize that the process has and will definitely have more disadvantages than advantages. In fact, I believe the process can also justly be called monopolization. 

This free movement of goods and ability to do business in any part of the world creates an illusion of big opportunities. If you start looking at European Union, which could be the best example of globalization, you actually see the model of former Soviet Union with slightly changed shape and slightly different ideas. However, each country has a quota of what they can produce and export, which means that bigger countries like France and Germany(also Great Britain) have tremendous advantages over other smaller European countries. 

To do business in European Union in certain sphere you must have a dozen of requirements, certificates and the like, which not every company is able to get. It is pretty difficult for small companies to compete in such a big market. Over the previous ten years I saw a lot of small companies going bankrupt and big companies becoming stronger because all the requirements for business are very favorable for big companies and very unfavorable for small firms. 

It means one single thing, that in the future all economy will be run by huge corporations and who knows; maybe there won’t be any small businesses anymore. You could very well see in the banking sector too. Some banks are bigger than the GDP of their countries. What could happen if they went bankrupt? Tens of thousands people would be jobless and how fast will they be able to find new work again? This only shows how important private small and medium businesses are. There would never be a crisis of such magnitude as we saw in 2008 if global economy would be small and medium company based and not giant company based. 

Who failed during crisis and whom the governments tried to save with taxpayers’ money? Not small folks I guess. No, it was these huge mega corporations that are too big to fail. We cannot depend on a few big companies for the health of the whole economy. It is impossible. What if they decide to gamble with taxpayers’ money, which they often like doing? What are we going to do then? 

As you can see I am more against globalization and I hope you understand why. Governments should retain their sovereignties in order for democracy to continue functioning. Countries should be able to decide what is acceptable for them and what is not. Now in Europe, we are told more and more what we should accept and what we shouldn’t, as if we are some sort of brainless creatures. If the process continues we can actually see some sort of dictatorship, which would be a hybrid of communism and capitalism. Let’s pray it does not happen.

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Googler thoughts on financial crisis of 2008


Googler thoughts on Libya attack

Googler thoughts on financial crisis of 2008

Today on googler blog I want to give you a few thoughts on the financial crisis of 2008. I believe the entire world was affected by it, yet the biggest part of the world did not really understand the causes that led to the crisis. I am absolutely convinced that we can definitely know those causes and that the crash could have been predicted and avoided. We have not created a system which we cannot control and we do not play the game that beats us. We have to see how the financial system works and what happens when there are excesses reached in the system. 

In order to understand the causes we need to understand how important money for our global economy is. It is economic blood. When blood is normally circulating through human body everything is fine, but when you start experiences things like thrombus, low blood or high blood pressure and the like, your body gets into trouble. You might have a stroke or a heart attack or some other serious thing may happen.

The same is true about current economic system. When money circulates around all economic system and there is enough of it (not too much and not too little) everything is fine. However, when there is a sudden or gradual increase of money in the system, we start having an economic disease which is called inflation. It is ok when it is small and stable. However, if the amount of money in the system continues increasing, inflation continues rising and we finally have what is called a bubble. How is that bubble formed?

By means of borrowing and lending. In present system money comes through huge commercial banks, which get their money through central banks and distribute them to smaller commercial banks, which in their turn lend it to businesses and private individuals. So, when everybody is rushing to borrow and there are those (banks) who are rushing to lend, the system is flooded with money. If the process continues for a considerable period of time, inflation gets out of control. Everything is booming, salaries rising, new businesses are being created and…gradually interest rates are being raised.

This increase in interest rates is meant to cool the economy from heating, but unfortunately it is seldom applied at the right time and it seldom creates desirable results. This process starts a chain of bankruptcies because some companies and private individuals are no longer able to pay their debts. This causes banks to increase interest rates even more in order to compensate losses. Finally everybody is in trouble, because at some point banks are not willing to lend anymore as interest rates are very high. So, money stops coming to the system and that’s when bubble explodes and crisis comes. That’s what happened in 2008 right when lending and construction boom ended. 

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Googler thoughts on Libya attack

Googler thoughts about Trump statements regarding Obama’s birthplace