The Times They Are A Changing

Our economy seems to have been in the toilet for some time now. But, with the recent downward trend of companies like Merrill Lynch and Lehman, institutions we thought were made of obsidian now crashing before our eyes, it may be a good time to make sure your money is safe. Or, at least as safe as you can make ensure it to be.

Federally Insured

If you have more than $100,000 dollars in your bank you may want to do two things. First, make sure it is federally insured. Then transfer anything over $100,000 into another bank, making sure your money is also federally insured there. The insurance that protects and is backed by the federal government is paid with your tax money, but will not safely top the $100,000 mark

Brokerage accounts are not all federally insured. The SIPC (Securities Investor Protection Corp) backs your investments for up to $100,000 in cash and $500,000 in overall securities. Again, if you have more money that this invested, move some to other investment firms.

Home Equity Line of Credit

While it is still possible, set up a home equity line of credit. You may not need it at the moment, but as bad as the economy is looking, it is as good as cash in the pocket. Having it set up doesn’t mean you need to use it immediately.

Taxes and Savings

Does it seem as though prices of everything has gone up, gas, food, clothing, rent? Well, of course it has, but it’s a good bet that your salary has not kept up pace. Well, don’t look now but it doesn’t matter who eventually wins the ticket for the ride in the Whitehouse, taxes are going to have to go up. The Iraq war has put the American people in a huge debt crisis and somehow it will have to be paid. How else do you imagine that will happen except to raise taxes.

That makes it a good time to cut costs on anything left that you can. Carpool, eat out less, cut down on family vacations and weekend trips, stop shopping for things that aren’t necessities. The more you can put away now, the better you will be able to handle any new taxes that come along.

Okay, I’m just sick and tired of getting 10 or 15 hits on my post each day. All right, once I got 49 hits, but who knows why. I am on a search to figure out how some people get hundreds even thousands of hits a day on their site. Once and for all I will figure this out as it seems to be a big secret that only a few will tell.

Your told to put your site on social networks and get all your friends to check out your posts every day. Sorry, that isn’t going to even get you a 100 hits. So, I’m guessing that the words used in the article or post must be the secret. If someone else is willing to spill the beans let me know. I would be most grateful and would save a lot of time so I could get back to writing about things I enjoy.

First thing I did was to look at some people’s sites that were making a phenomenal number of hits each day to see if I could figure out why. I read one persons post that made a little sense, but not much as far as content. I didn’t think their subject matter was especially high on the subject totem pole, but I thought that might be where I’ve gone wrong. Yet, the post did contain a lot of out-of-place words. I’m thinking I’m on to something here.

Next thing I did was look up the most common internet search words. You guessed it, most of them had to do with “sex.” So, my next question to myself was, “Would it be compromising myself and my writing to sprinkle a few of those words in my writing?” I haven’t come to a conclusion on that yet. The first question will be if the network I post to will even allow me to use the word, “sex” in my post. We will see. And you will know if I’ve had to disguise the word somehow. Okay, let’s try the experiment out by putting in some of those words. Tomorrow I will let you know how many hits I got. If it’s still not many, maybe there has to be an abundance of the same word. But, I am determined to work this out and post my findings.

Well, I don’t feel comfortable using the number 1 and 2 words. But Google is number 3. Some others are boobs, hentai (I don’t even know what that means), Paris Hilton, eBay, yahoo, sex, milf (don’t know that one either), girls, Jessica Simpson, poetry, Carmen Electra, games, dogs, Jenna Jamison, myspace, Pamela Anderson, 50 cent, yahoo.com, nude, games cheat, 89.com (I’m not going to check to see what this site is), mapquest, girls gone wild. Okay that’s it. I skipped a few though.

Okay, I need some more coffee and then we’ll see if we can find anymore lists. Because, who knows how old these lists are and for some of the names anyway, may have changed popularity.

I found a site that looked like you needed membership, but I’m not taking time to join anything this morning. And I definitely am not going to pay for this info. But, I did find some replies on that site that it let me read regarding some of the phrases and of course top ones were including sex and porn. Don’t think I can include those on a daily basis and still feel good about my writing. Interestingly, someone said that “learn Chinese” was one of the top 50 phrases. Wow, that’s odd. Apparently “learn English” was in there somewhere, but who knows what countries that was coming from - maybe it doesn’t matter. It seems like the word “free” would be a common word or any phrase with it included. Just a thought of my own.

Well, this experiment could go on for some time as perhaps I will get some results but will need to see how I can get better results. Will I need to sprinkle a particular word throughout the post or does it matter how many times a word is printed or does it need to be in the title or first sentence or paragraph? And then you have to wonder if actually saying out loud (or at least in a post) that you are trying to figure out what some people already know and use is acceptable. I’ve never liked secrets. So, we will see what kink of response I get from this post. Stick with me.

Washington, September 15, 2008 - Poles have shown the American people are most concerned over the Economy. So, it’s not surprising that both presidential nominees are anxious to prove they will do the best job to dig us out of the hole the last 8 years has dug. Where John McCain blames the most recent upheavals of Lehman and Merrill Lynch on “greed and corruption” as he promised to straighten it all out if he is elected president, Barack Obama blames it on policies of the current administration and says McCain will only spread more of the same.

What the American People want to know is how each of them would fix the economy and bring us back to feeling we are moving into the future with some security rather than feel that each day brings more economical gloom and doom. Perhaps we will have to wait until the upcoming presidential debates to get a clearer picture on how McCain and Obama plan to make the changes they have both been touting in their speeches.

Obama believes that we are in the most serious economical situation since the Great Depression. All the while, our current president, Bush, still considers that we have a strong economy.

McCain doesn’t seem to be able to make up his mind while he continually contradicts himself or at his age is he just forgetting what he’s already said. In a recent TV ad he declared, “Our economy is in crisis. Only proven reformers John McCain and Sarah Palin can fix it.” Yet while speaking to voters in Jacksonville, Florida he touted Bush’s words by saying, “The fundamentals of our economy are strong.” So, we really don’t have a clear picture of his beliefs on the U.S. economy.

Let us hope to see some hard hitting questions put before both presidential candidates come debate time. Let us watch and listen carefully so we can make the best possible choice for our country.