Tag Archives: Taxes

Financial Advice

Are you Street Smart?

10/24/2014 Portland, Oregon – Pop in your mints…

Are you teachable and willing to learn new things?  Are you interested in making better financial decisions? Are you interested in making more money? Then you may just be ready for Business Street Smarts.  What is Business Street Smarts?  According to the marketing copy, it is a program which will allow us to 1) Know our Finances, 2) be Efficient, 3) Control our taxes, and 4) Prevent Fraud.  What business owner wouldn’t be interested in these skills?

Best of all, it is a fireside chat with a former colleague or ours, none other than Mike Field, CPA, JD.  For those who don’t do acronyms, he is an accountant and a lawyer.  Despite these handicaps, Mike is a fun guy, and rivals Tom Cruise in the category of person producing the most dental glare when they smile.  Here he is laying out the virtues of Business Street Smarts:

We have just completed the first audio portion of the downloadable MP3 series, which is a lesson in establishing “hooks” for memory retrieval.  In this section, Field shows you how to organize Information in your mind so that you can instantly retrieve it.  He employs a unique teaching technique to achieve this goal.  The technique seems basic, and it is.  The jest of it is to use the familiar and join it, mentally, with the unfamiliar.

At the end of the first day, we are aware that we will do the following over the course of the next 15 days in terms of sections:

1) Build a Foundation of Primary Financial Statements, Balance Sheets, Income Statements
2) Learn how to analyze these statements
3) Understand Business Taxes and the interplay with one’s personal taxes
4) Learn how to detect and prevent Fraud, as well as some basics in bookkeeping

However, all we know at this point is our way around an unfamiliar house with some incredibly strange things involving Olympic gymnasts, Count Dracula, and a cat happening in the front yard, on the porch, and in the living room.  Yet somehow, it all makes sense.  Will it translate into better financial and business decisions for The Mint?  Stay tuned.

If you are as intrigued as we are and want to learn more, visit: http://www.businessstreetsmarts.com/ for more information on this unique and entertaining program.

And by the way, don’t believe the hype on deflation, for the debt based monetary system cannot tolerate it.  The economy is going gangbusters, and will continue to until further notice.

Stay tuned and Trust Jesus.

Stay Fresh!

David Mint

Key Indicators for October 24, 2014

Copper Price per Lb: $3.06
Oil Price per Barrel (WTI):  $81.01

Corn Price per Bushel:  $3.53
10 Yr US Treasury Bond:  2.27%
Bitcoin price in US:  $358.50
FED Target Rate:  0.09%
Gold Price Per Ounce:  $1,231

MINT Perceived Target Rate*:  0.25%
Unemployment Rate:  5.9%
Inflation Rate (CPI):   0.1%
Dow Jones Industrial Average:  16,805
M1 Monetary Base:  $2,747,700,000,000

M2 Monetary Base:  $11,514,900,000,000

The Mint

A taste of Autumn, Greece remains on the hot seat, the US budgets to end wars?

9/19/2011 Portland, Oregon – Pop in your mints…
We’ve had our first taste of autumn here in the Pacific Northwest.  We found ourselves strangely welcoming the overcast sky and constant humidity.  It is the type of weather that is pleasant for a month or two.  Unfortunately, we get about 8 months of it here which requires some sort of escape to the sun, either Hawaii or California, for it to remain tolerable.
But still, the first taste was sweet and provided a warm feeling that all was well with the world, despite constant reports to the contrary.  Fortunately for us, the sun looks as though it will return this week.
On the whitewashed shores of Greece, where the sun seems to perpetually shine, there is now intense pressure from which there seems to be no escape.  The Prime Minister was called back from a trip to the US after receiving an emergency call from the Finance Minister as he stopped over in London.  The poor chap had to be on a conference call with creditors and the troika and didn’t want to take the lashing alone.
As if to give the world a taste of things to come, the Greek Government passed an emergency property tax which is to be collected via the citizens’ electricity bill to help ensure compliance.  Apparently the folks at the electric company are not happy about adding tax collection to their duties and are pushing back on the order.
The Greeks never have been good at collecting taxes, either that or their citizens are especially adept at avoiding paying them.  Either way, the combination makes for low tax revenues which makes servicing public debt, well, difficult.
We offer a suggestion to the Greeks, privatize the electric company and then enact an enormous tax on consumption.  At least then the riots would be staged at the electric company and not at parliament.
Meanwhile, before departing for New York in perhaps the least understood yet most important peace-keeping mission the US will ever embark upon, President Obama gave yet another clinic on teleprompter reading during his speech on, what else, government finances.  His proposal was to save $1.5 Trillion over the next 10 years by in large part by ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Will Palestine Become a UN Member?
We do not have any statistics, but we are willing to bet that this is not the first time that ending these wars has been proposed as a deficit reduction measure.  What is truly astonishing to almost every thinking person is that these two military adventures have continued for so long and have become such a drain on the public treasury  that ending them now would save $1 Trillion.
Less war, more money, what a novel idea!  It is as straightforward as it is unlikely to happen.
We sense that both this speech and bath time for Greek creditors will be interrupted by the Palestinian bid for statehood at the UN this week.  The Middle East has not seen a moment like this since Israel vied for statehood in 1949.  Let us pray that this moment passes in a peaceful manner.
Stay tuned and Trust Jesus.
Stay Fresh!
Key Indicators for September 19, 2011
Gold Price Per Ounce:  $1,779 PERMANENT UNCERTAINTY

M1 Monetary Base:  $2,101,100,000,000 RED ALERT!!!
M2 Monetary Base:  $9,540,500,000,000 YIKES!!!!!!!

Uncategorized

Watch “Judge Judy – Here’s Who You Support With Taxes” on YouTube

Judge Judy tells it like it is. It is important to note that the complaintants statements could apply if two Fed member bank CEOs were in their place and the issue were TARP!