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About Us
Choose Financial Life & Health, not Death!
Today, October 19th, is the 12th anniversary of the death of our good friend, Dr. Robert Giller, MD, who was one of the first people I know of to die while on the cellphone. He was talking with his beloved wife, Nancy, as his Toyota Sienna van spun out on the Jersey Turnpike in one of the worst rainstorms on record. Over nine inches of rain fell that day but Dr. Bob, as everyone called him, was a fanatical collector of antiques and so he bet his life and drove to Atlantic City early so as to be first on line for the big annual antiques fair they hold there. He had someone else driving and so he was in the back seat but wasn't wearing his seatbelt when disaster struck and was ejected from the van. It was a horrible loss to many, many people because Dr. Bob was a great guy and the best internist and diagnostician you can imagine.
I miss Dr. Bob even though I speak and listen to him often. You see, when one of my corporate or investor clients for my Executive $trategic Planning (E$P) psychic services asks me a medical question - we all have 'em! - I like to think that I can count on dear Bobby to give me the answer they seek. Although I always preface such information with an admonition not to use it as a substitute for the opinion of a licensed medical practitioner that you've investigated and whose opinion you trust, I plunge right in, confident that Dr. Bob will guide me correctly and I have to say that I cannot remember one time when he/I didn't get it right. But as they say when they're trying to sell you financial "products," past performance is not a guarantee of future results.
Dr. Robert M. Giller, who was also a best-selling author and was working on a book unfortunately called "How To Live To Be One Hundred," died and gave up a life of love, service, wealth, fun and being a part of history - he was the house doctor at The Filmore East concert hall in NYC and was part of Andy Warhol's inner circle - he died because he forgot that wearing your seatbelt is the first rule of being in a moving car. The present financial crisis that seems to have everyone but me and Amy in total fear and panic mode is the result of people forgeting the first rule of warfare, which is "Make your base secure."
We don't own any stocks, other than the ones my dear Aunt Rosie and Uncle Morris left to me this year, because although I have helped make a lot of money for my clients with my psychic advice, I have taken their advice about investing in "financial products" to heart, i.e., they've always told me that you should only invest money you can afford to lose. Since Amy and I cannot afford to lose any money at all because we have to work too hard to earn it we have, therefore, never invested in anything but ourselves, the best way we know to make our base secure. By the way, I've been saying for decades that the first time I'd buy a single share of stock, the market would crash. Who knew that I didn't even have to buy it! Sorry!!!!
I'm not trying to rub the stock market's terrible performance of late in anyone's face. In fact, I'm the only person I know of who is predicting that it will start ticking up in February of 2009, swinging as wildly as it has been doing of late but going up, up, up. Why should you listen to me? Because I was six out of six this past April regarding the major financial indices when I was interviewed on www.TheStreet.com, one of the premier financial websites. I was wrong, apparently about one thing - Romney is not going to win the election! If you'd like to check it out, click here. You'll learn that I think that the Dow Jones Industrial Average will be in the 17,000 range in a couple of years, not longer than that, so hang on, it'$ coming!
And if you liked that clip, check out my second round of psychic predictions here posted on September 18th (and, like the other clip, recorded weeks earlier) and you'll see they put up my scorecard, six out of seven for April, and future predictions, too.
Other people are saying that it will be years and years before the Dow (T'ao, the Chinese word for Metaphysical Life Force, read "The Book of T'ao" and you'll learn a lot, is pronounced "dow!") gets back to where it was, in the 14,000 range, but don't listen to them. They're saying that and taking actions that will make them lots of money if people buy into what they're saying. In fact, the expression, "buy into" originated in the stock market. You buy into a rising or falling market the way a surfer enters a wave.
The same smooth talking con-men who got us into this mess haven't disappeared to hide their heads in shame because they have no shame. They're still there and they are are doing what they do best; i.e., taking advantage of anyone and any situation in order to maximize their income because they think that the world is a jungle and it's all about survival of the fittest. If you think there are no people making money, big money, right now and who've been making money as the market swings wildly while generally going down, you don't know the reality of investing: Investing is gambling. Period.
But there are professional gamblers who know how to bet, how to read the "tells" of other players and play their cards accordingly, knowing what cards their adversaries in the card game are holding and what they're probably going to do, there are "card counters" who know how to win at blackjack/21, all of these people can actually earn a good living gambling and they do it by playing the odds and using various systems. But, like the financial markets, it's still gambling.
I guess we are all gamblers in some way. Amy and I bet on ourselves. We have chosen to earn our living by creating things that we believe to be of actual, tangible, demonstrable value to people and selling them. Anyone who sells anything knows that the money value of anything depends on what people are willing to pay for the right of owning it; it's no big mystery. You can't eat a stock certificate, you can't learn anything from it, you can't wear or build anything from it besides a hat or paper airplane and it makes ugly, conversation starting wallpaper, if that's what you want. It's only worth what someone else is willing to pay you for it.
When a company sells stock in an Initial Public Offering (IPO), it puts a value on each share but that value is really what the company and the stock broker that "underwrites" the offering BELIEVES that people are willing to pay. So they pull a number out of their a...hats and if the stock shares are selling well, they raise the price, and if no one is buying they lower the price until they do. If no one buys at a lower price, they don't do the offering. They're selling stock, "going public," and subjecting themselves to all the legal and reporting hassle that entails - it's a lot of work and especially if you've got to "cook the books" and deceive your shareholders - because they are trying to raise money by selling shares in their company. By doing so, the shares they keep for themselves go from zero dollars in value up to whatever people are willing to pay.
But once those shares are sold in the IPO, they have a life of their own. In astrology, the fifth house of an astrological chart "rules" creativity, children, and gambling. These are all things that, once created, have a life of their own. Stocks are touted as giving you the opportunity to buy a share in a company's fortunes but this is a bald faced lie. Unless someone or the issuing company is willing to buy back your shares of stock, then your shares and your money are completely at the mercy of market forces for their value.
And what just happened? All of a sudden, everyone lost confidence that there was someone, somewhere willing to pay them a decent price for their stock certificate and boom, the market tanked. People realized that "the emperor had no clothes." The mask of respectability and dependability was pulled away from the big Ponzi scheme that is the stock market, where last one out is left holding the bag of air. And like in The Wizard of Oz, there behind the curtain was an older man, a bunch of older men in the case of the world's financial markets, pulling levers like mad and trying to convince people that the great and powerful stock market was still a safe place to put your money. It had been, in a way and for a while, and it will be again, in a way and in a while, but the market and all markets are not and have never really been a safe place to put your money. You may quote me on this (you'd better, the Kaballah equates non-attribution and plagiarism with murder!): The best any market - from stocks to lox or even socks - the best any market can be is a safe place to gamble your money. Never forget that.
Of course, Wall Street's legendary "market forces" are working overtime here, so it's even safer if you are one of those older men behind the curtain of Oz or the Wall of Street and you're a friend of Hank Paulson, the US Secretary of the Treasury, who's cooked up this stupid bailout scheme to brainwash the public into thinking that anything other than confidence in the game called "the markets" and confidence in the future can save the market and that the government is doing something.
But what was and is really being done is to get the mass hypnosis and stock market games back on track, which has the added benefit of protecting his billionaire friends from the consequences of their actions at the people's expense and detriment. What we can see here at work is the bullshit protection of socialism and it's criminal taking known as shared wealth but in this situation socialism only for the rich. And, sickeningly real in this situation is for most people every day, a different the wolf at the door, no food on the table with the children crying as their parents fight stark reality of capitalism's you-should-have-planned-better-you-loser - that's what "government" is doing for the average person. The reason that Paulson let Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers go down the tubes and not the other investment banks (read "inveterate, degenerate professional gamblers") is because they weren't his buds. That's the way the world works, no?
But listen, what can we do about that? Not much. Just like the presidential election, which is also driving everyone crazy and depressing everyone, there's not much that we can do about it.
Who am I voting for? I may vote for Ralph Nader again. For years before he first ran I wrote to him begging him to do so, so I voted for him. What else could I do? He did what I asked him.
Obama seems like a nice person, though so do the people who screwed up our economy big time. Bottom line: I don't think that he's ready to be President of the United States.
McCain also seems like a nice person and no one's walked across the isle to work with Democrats more than him - that's why the Republican party used to HATE him! But I'm not sure even he's ready to be President at this time.
Is anyone? I think Romney would have been perfect but the racism displayed by
the religious zealot wing of the Republican party - the Democrats have their own
religious zealots, i.e., the Bush-haters who hate him and now Sarah Palin more
than they hate the Islamic jihadi terrorists and the other vile people around
the world who want to kill us all, the extreme atheists who ignore this
nation's history as a religious country and who actively work to take all the
historic trappings of religion out of everyone's lives and, you've got to admit
it, the Obama-is-God kool-aid drinkers!) against his Mormon faith shamed their
supposed Christian values and cost this nation the services of a real
turn-around specialist; that's business lingo for someone whose specialty is
taking dying businesses and resurrecting them.
Hey, I'm suspicious of ANYONE who actually WANTS to be POTUS, as the Secret Service calls the president. I'd rather have someone that has to be dragged kicking and screaming into the White House yelling "I don't want to go!!!!," especially given the tough situation that everyone THINKS we're in now. (Joe The Plumber? It could happen with a write in!)
That's my whole point: when people THINK things are bad, that makes things bad! I've never seen a bigger proof of the power of negative affirmations and how we create our own reality at the macro level! You see, that's the key to the whole thing. Before September, everyone thought that things were good and so they kept buying and selling stocks like normal and the gambling game kept going of its own accord, with "the house" winning the lion's share, of course (the stock brokers, investment bankers, hedge funds, etc.) But all of a sudden, the conventional wisdom was that things are bad and so everyone started selling and then things really got bad. And now Amy and I feel like we're the only people who are positive about life and the future. Are you? I certainly hope so.
This is America. We're a nation of self-sufficient, tough, and resourceful people. We can do anything when we want to do it. Our parents and grandparents did it and so can we. No wimps allowed, especially now, though we must be charitable to those who cannot help themselves. We are the most charitable nation in the world!
We are also a nation founded and peopled by individuals who got fed up with their lot in country they were living in and said, "This is BS! I'm out of here! I'm going to make a new life in America!" Like most of us, I'm not one of those people but I'm descended from them. And the American Indians? The ones that are still alive and not totally depressed are some of the toughest and most resourceful people in our nation. And I'm not surprised that they're getting some small measure of payback by exploiting their invaders' predilection to gambling.
And for those of you who think I'm crazier than anyone for even entertaining the notion of voting for Ralph Nader, consider this: He's a thousand times better at community organizing than Obama. Ralph Nader has been organizing, since Obama was a 8 years old and an intern with The Weather Underground (just kidding, kool-aid drinkers! God/dess, how are comedians going to make a living if Obama is elected). Ralph Nader has organized important and effective national organizations, NGO's, that get things done and knows all the players, good and bad, and all the ins and outs of Washington, D.C., better that a rat. And he's a bigger hero than McCain ever was because his herculean efforts regarding consumer safety have saved many times more lives than McCain's Navy and Senate service saved and he saved those lives without bombing anyone or firing a shot.
In fact, if dear Dr. Bob had used the seat belt that Ralph Nader ensured would be available to him in his Toyota Sienna, which was re-designed as a result of Bobby's death and the resulting lawsuit, he would be alive today and freaking out about the stock market, though he was mainly invested in the house of the moment he was redesigning and filling with his other investments, his art, frames, and antiques. And I would be there as his psychic friend to tell him that he had nothing to fear but fear, itself, and that he shouldn't sell his stocks because you only lose when you sell, unless your stock becomes worthless like Lehman Brothers or Enron or an unfortunate batch of other stocks down through time.
People who want to sell you stocks will tell you that the market has outperformed anything over the decades. But they forget to tell you an important thing: That performance calculation does not take into account the stocks that become worthless and become delisted from the Dow Jones Industrial Average!!!! If you factor in those stocks the return on investment of the Dow is a lot lower. There's no such thing as a free lunch and there's no such thing as something being fireproof (everything burns at some temperature) and there's no such thing as a 100% safe investment. Here's another one of my quotable sayings, so quote me if you repeat it: All expectations are unreasonable - no one is guaranteed anther breath, let alone winning the lottery.
But, in general, you can take to the bank my psychic advice that things are going to get better and when you do, take it to a bank that is still going to be there, like Hudson City Savings Bank - it's more secure than any other bank in the USA, check it out if you don't believe me. When you go there, tell them Monte Farber the psychic from The Enchanted World and www.TheStreet.com told you to.
By the way, speaking of shameless self-promotion, if you're in Kansas City and listen to The Church of Lazlo radio show on The Buzz, you can hear me every Monday afternoon at 5PM, they're doing Monte Mondays because I've been doing live on-air phone-in psychic readings that have generated lots of listeners. It is gratifying to have people listen to me. I've worked my whole life to be able to advise people well and I am doing so. So don't worry, be happy, save your money regularly in a safe bank, don't gamble, wear your seat belt, even if you're in one of the back seats of a car, taxi, van, or truck. Choose life, not death. But if you're in the market don't sell! It will be back, better than ever in a couple of years. It's not a safe place to put your money just yet but it will be by February. Safer, I mean! Damn, I can't believe the well-being of our nation and the whole world is tied to a casino named Wall Street! There must be a better way. Ralph? Dr. Bob? Anyone? Any ideas? Everyone, fasten your Ralph Nader-supplied seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy ride.
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